Why Dolby Atmos is so Important to upcoming Modern Artists

The White Room - Dolby Atmos Production Studio in Southampton, Hampshire.
Why is producing your music in Dolby Atmos so important, what is it, and why is White Room your best choice for music production?

The White Room is the only Dolby Atmos Mixing Studio in Hampshire, and if you do a search for Dolby Atmos Studios in nearby Wiltshire and Dorset, just like Hampshire, you’ll only find retailers and installers installing commercial Atmos listening systems. So, maybe, White Room is the only Atmos Studio in the central South…?

Despite the lack of studios, mixing in Dolby Atmos in 2024 is incredibly important if you’re an artist producing your own music. If you subscribe to Apple Music or Tidal for a month (using the free trials!), it’ll be tricky to find a modern artist who doesn’t have a Dolby Atmos version of their albums, EPs and Singles.

And many of the legacy artists are having their libraries remixed in Dolby Atmos as well, and there are some really good reasons why. So let’s look at what Dolby Atmos is, why it’s vital for your music to have an Atmos release, and why it’s no more expensive (with White Room anyway!) to have your music mixed and released in Dolby Atmos.

I love music, I love sound and I love getting lost in music. Transitioning over to Dolby Atmos mixing was not cheap and I’ve invested heavily in my Dolby Atmos system to make it available and affordable to local musicians, including the Pro Tools Ultimate suite; the Avid and Digidesign Hardware, 12 Adam monitor speakers in the room; GIK Traps and Diffusors; and I built it all myself!! I feel passionate about what Dolby Atmos does for the listening experience and I want to work with Artists who can help me push the boundaries of what 3 dimensional audio can do.

What is Dolby Atmos

In short - it’s surround sound. But it’s also cleverer than that. It’s Surround Sound, but also now deliverable to stereo headphones. If you’ve been to the movies in the last 20 years, or if you have a home cinema with more than 2 speakers, you’ve probably experienced surround sound. It’s a format where the mixer can place sounds anywhere around you. For movies, this is really easy to grasp - we’ve probably experienced sounds and explosions coming from all around us when we get lost in a movie. It really enhances the listening experience and production companies have been pushing the experience since the 70’s - yeah, it’s that old!

Dolby Atmos is just the latest iteration of Surround Sound - it’s a system that allows mixers to place sounds in a 3 dimensional space with pinpoint accuracy, and it’s now not just the exclusive providence of cinema. We’re releasing music this way - with sounds and instruments coming from all axis. It’s called “immersive” for a very good reason - you just get immersed in the music.

Dolby Atmos is now incredibly clever. Where most people tend to still consume music using stereo headphones, Dolby have a system that allows you to experience the 3 dimensional sound in stereo headphones through a process called Binaural Processing, which gives you the sense of 3D space, but in headphones or pods. And it’s a wonderful listening experience.

Apple Music has been pushing it heavily for the last couple of years under the guise “Spatial Audio”.

Why should you have Atmos versions of your music?

There are a couple of really good reasons. 1 - everyone is doing it! It’s literally the most modern format of listening to music. And 2 - and this is the most crucial - it gives you more products to sell!

Number 2 is a really important one for artists, especially when your desire is to make a living from your music - and they only way you can do that is by people buying your music and coming to your concerts. The more ‘stuff’ you have to sell, the more money you can potentially make.

People have been buying stereo albums forever. We’re quite used to buying or downloading a standard stereo album for around £7.99. But Atmos and surround albums are generally worth more. Partially because Atmos studios are expensive to resource and run - they generally try to charge more for Atmos mixes. Those costs are passed on to the customer so the costs can be recovered. (Seriously - do a quick search for SACD or Surround Sound Albums on Amazon.)

For the streaming services, notice that the streaming services with Atmos delivery included are the higher tiers.

This is Tidal’s plans - it’s twice as expensive to stream the Atmos versions of your music.

You have the legitimate reason to sell your Atmos music for a higher price than the stereo versions. After all, it ‘can’ be more expensive to mix your work in Atmos (although not with me!).

This is what Tidal say about Dolby Atmos on their website.




White Room Production Studio is the only place to have your music mixed in Dolby Atmos in the Hampshire / Dorset / Wiltshire areas.

And with me at White Room, it’s NO MORE EXPENSIVE than mixing in Stereo. In fact….

I mix your music in Atmos AND Stereo for no extra cost - and we’ll upload it to over 150 Streaming Services if you want…

You'll also find that I'm either no more expensive than the other studios or, in some cases, less expensive!!

When you walk away from any other Studio around here after finishing your record - you’ll have a standard stereo version for sending to streaming or making a tape, Vinyl or CD with.

When you walk away from White Room after finishing your record, you’ll have:

A Dolby Atmos File containing:

A 7.1.4 version

A 5.1 version

A 2.0 version

(And other formats in between)

A Binaural Version

A Stereo File for streaming, CD, Tape, Vinyl creation.

We can also send the files up to the streaming services, and connect your PayPal to when ever your music gets streamed, it receives the relevant amount of money directly to your PayPal account. Of course, if you’re working with a label or you are a label, we don’t need to do this - they’ll do it for you.
But If you’re able to promote your music yourself, there’s no need for a label.

Do the versions sound different?

They can sound the same or they can sound different. Generally, the way Atmos and stereo audio is mixed is different, and this affects the final product. And actually, we actively mix this way. It takes a little more time, but that’s on us and not the client.

Stereo Mixes are generally louder and fatter as, for decades, we’ve been beefing up the music on the Master Bus to make music a bit bigger and louder. We’re using layers of additional control and distortion to make the record sound bigger, brighter and fatter that its general mix.
Dolby Atmos music can’t be mixed that way, but it’s a different experience - and that’s ok. Your music will still sound great and sound punchy, but the loudness standards are are lower than stereo on account that the Atmos file can be delivered to 7.1.4 systems all the way down to 2.0 systems. And all of the music in each of those 12 channels (7+1+4) has to end up somewhere, so it’s all ‘down mixed’ together into the lower versions.

For example - The 5.1 version has the Ceiling Speakers and the 2 side speakers mixed into the front and rear speakers of the 5.1 array, in the correct proportions depending on their placement in the 7.1.4 mix. So it all sounds present and correct with fewer speakers.

The 2.0 version has all of the surround speakers down mixed into the main speakers, again in the correct proportions, so that the mix all still sounds correct. This negates having to mix down specific versions, which can get expensive. But the lower’ loudness’ of the Atmos mix means that when all of the additional channels are down mixed together for the other formats, the music doesn’t become too loud and distort. (There’s a whole other lesson on Digital Audio Theory on why that is.) To be fair, we’re probably getting a bit technical now and I might be losing you….!!

In short - they can sound different, but it’s not like the listener will be comparing side by side!! They’re listen to the version they get delivered, and if the music is good, they’ll love it all the same.

But why else would you choose to work with me?

What else - I have a commitment to excellent customer service.

Quite simply, I don’t want unhappy customers, and I want to put out work that I’m proud of. When I deliver what I consider to be the final mix, that *should* be the end of it. But if we’re still not quite there, we’ll keep going until it’s right - and for no additional cost.

And, undoubtedly, during the course of working together we’ll end up discussing how to be successful. We’ll talk about marketing, we’ll talk about live performance, we’ll talk about social media - all of the things that artists need to do to be successful. So there are many more levels to working with White Room than just making a record. A lot of my day to day work is promoting live shows - it’s a subject I love discussing.

What else - access to a highly capable multi-instrumentalist with excellent musical theory knowledge and composition skills.

One of the favourite things about my job is helping my clients refine their work to turn them into larger productions. We’ll look at top line, chord progressions, structure - all with the goal of making original and identifiable music that will stand the test of time.

I’ve spent years playing Guitar, Keyboards, Bass and Drums, and I’m an accomplished vocalist. I play weekly in theatre shows playing Guitar and Keyboards, and my week days composing, playing and recording in the studio. You’d be unlikely to find another Producer locally with a breadth of skills with instruments and theory.



Conclusion.

If you’re an original artist, recording and releasing your own music for commercial sale, have a conversation with us about working with us to product and mix your music. You get a Atmos Version AND a stereo version of your music for NO additional cost. Compare that to a standard studio or audio engineer mixing in stereo - for the same money (or there abouts, our rates equate to around £25 per hour), you’ll walk away with a more products that you can resell for more money! And if you’re not attached to a label, we’ll even help you upload everything to the streaming services so you can start earning from your music immediately.

No other studio offers you the breadth of service and commitment for your hard earned money. We want to work with authentic artists and genuine talent to make wonderful sounding music that we’re proud of, and that will sell and help you become the artist you want to be.

Hit us up today to discuss how I can help you with your next release - A Dolby Atmos release.