| ▲ | haberman 3 days ago | |
Ha, I don't know much about Dolby Atmos and spacial placement. But from prior experience I'm somewhat skeptical about what this kind of clever DSP can do for choral music. For example, when I learned about convolution reverb, and how it should theoretically be able to simulate the unique reverb pattern of any room, I was initially excited about the possibilities. But after trying it I was underwhelmed. That said, I'm open to being convinced. If you know of any compelling demos of this kind of spatial placement, I'd be interested to see. I had not heard of Nonsuch Palace, despite having a passing interest in Henry VIII and certainly a large interest in Tallis! Is it thought that Spem was performed there? | ||
| ▲ | omnicognate 3 days ago | parent [-] | |
Atmos on earphones is done by manipulating the waveform that reaches the eardrum to reproduce the distinctive impulse response due to the sound bouncing off different parts of the ear as it arrives. (Come to think of it I guess that's really also a form of convolutional reverb.) I think it's cool that it can be done on earphones at all, and with head tracking the effect can be noticeable at least, but I don't think it really adds much. I find earphone listening sort of envelopingly directionless in a special way of its own that I enjoy anyway. On a multi-speaker separates system, though, I think it's done simply by attenuating the signal to each speaker. Whether it's just that or something more sophisticated, the effect is much stronger and adds a lot more to the experience. A good system can place sounds clearly anywhere within a full dome enclosing the listener. The problem is that very few people have such a system, so the audience isn't huge. (That said, Apple Music heavily promotes spatial audio, so an Atmos Spem in Alium might reach more people just from search placement...) What Atmos adds beyond surround sound (which itself offers untapped opportunities for Spem in Alium) is: * It carries independent position data for up to 100 tracks, which can be edited (so you could experiment with the placement). * It adapts to the set of speakers available at playback, rather than having a fixed track per speaker. * It works on earphones, to some extent at least. * It has vertical as well as planar positioning, so the "balconies" would work. If you want to hear the results, a listening room would be the place. If you're in London, maybe here: https://tileyard.co.uk/stories/tileyard-london-dolby-atmos-s... I don't know of any renaissance choral music available in Atmos. Most of Deutsche Gramaphon's new recordings use it, so there might be some good classical examples there. A listening room should have general demos that would show the effect off. I think the Nonsuch Palace thing is just a suggestion rather than anything strongly historical. Wikipedia mentions it [1]: > This account is consistent with the catalogue entry at Nonsuch Palace: Arundel House was the London home of Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel; Nonsuch Palace was his country residence. Nonsuch had an octagonal banqueting hall, which in turn had four first-floor balconies above the ground floor; on this supposition it could have been the case that Tallis designed the music to be sung not only in the round, but with four of the eight five-part choirs singing from the balconies. | ||