Immersive Audio and How to Achieve It

@ghdprentice

Your idea of using multi speakers and Atmos… well, it is one of those things that sounds great on paper but isn’t remotely close to working in the real world.

Santana, Adele, Aerosmith and many others are ALL incorporating Atmos in the "real world" of their shows:

https://www.mixonline.com/live-sound/venues/on-the-cover-las-vegas-takes-immersive-live-part-1

High quality sound requires top quality components.

I can get Marantz, JBL, or Anthem SOA processors for less than $8K, can you say that about a SOA two channel preamp? High quality doesn’t have to be exorbitant.

So scale up a really high quality system to have 7 or 12 or more speakers / amps and you just increased you system cost by ten times.

This is debatable, I don’t think we could reach a conclusive answer.

I have a home theater system with a flagship surround processor, B&W 805 speakers and two B&W 800 subwoofers. It sounds great… but not remotely in the same league as my audio system.

Fair enough, I have a two channel audio system with a flagship (or Signature as Sony calls it) two channel preamp with a pair of Paradigm Studio Reference Active 40 speakers, all drivers custom built in Paradigm’s factory biamped internally by class A/B Anthem amps hand selected by the designer with a matched active crossover. It sounds great (and measures great, see my profile)...but not remotely in the same league as my 9.3.8 home theater.

As for my preferences in ’23:

Pat Metheny Live
Capathia Jenkins Live
StillHouse Junkies Live
Keb’ Mo’ Studio
Boz Scaggs Studio
John Primer Studio

A wash. I reject the premise over by here.

Pink Floyd started performing live surround in 1967
Quad instead of multi transducer mono like today.

It’s OK to love Atmos. You can keep it.

Live OR canned it's about the performances to me.

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd does Atmos:

“I’ve recorded some pieces of music in one form or another,” he says, noting that he’s been dedicating his time to getting the 3D-style Atmos sound mix just right for the film.

Roger Waters of Pink Floyd does Atmos:

"Quite simple the best sounding concert film we ever heard"

Shot of Abbey Road studio layout when they were remixing Pink Floyd in immersive audio (I use the same layout including using active speakers in the media room except my subs are not on the ceiling LOL):

@kota1 

Immersiveness is the wrong term for what I have in mind. What I am after is the illusion of a live performance, perceived realism in tibre, size and volume. I will discuss this in detail in a future post. 

@kota1 

I know when I'm immersed and when I'm not -- I most certainly do not require a scientist to perform or validate such assessments for me.