July book update - take your music into space! (*sort of)

Dear WaveShapers!

A major recent event inspired this month's book update. 

No, it's not the trip to space by the suggestively shaped Blue Origin rocket (it looks like a mushroom, right?), but rather the fact that Apple announced Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos in Apple Music, which is anticipated to become even more immersive when head-tracking is added in iOS 15 and AirPods Pro/Max. 

I've been passionate about spatial music for a while and have covered quadraphonic music in the past, but with a lack of a standardized delivery method, there wasn't an easy way to share it: unlike video, surround formats for audio like SACD, DVD-A and Blu-ray Audio have been rejected by consumers (wild guess: most of you don't have a single one at home).

So, you can imagine my excitement about the potential of this development, hoping that "this could be the one" that finally lets us all easily experience immersive, spatial audio in the comfort of our own headphones and surround-enabled TV setups. It's not just about Apple by the way, Tidal also supports Atmos and even Bezos took time away from launching rockets into space to support Atmos in Amazon Prime HD.

So great, I thought, I'll just cover Atmos and be done with it!

However, the "cheapest" Atmos renderer costs $300 and the only other current option I found is Nuendo, which costs way more. And don't get me started with the learning curve for those tools. 

But, when you think about it, head-tracking notwithstanding, an Atmos render into headphones (which is how we're likely to experience spatial audio) is really just a binaural effect sent out to two speakers in our ears. 

So, coverage needed to expand to binaural audio, as an alternative, until an affordable Atmos renderer comes along. I cover quite a few free or cheap binaural renderers that can pretty much do the same thing as far as listening on headphones is concerned (as opposed to a massive speaker setup)

But, when I started trying out different binaural tools, it turns out binaural tools are not all created equal, and some of the better ones had an Ambisonics core.

So, coverage needed to expand to Ambisonics :/

And then what if you wanted to use field recordings of this stuff, not just generate it on your own?

You guessed it, coverage needed to expand... 

So, I decided to dive deep into the tech and nomenclature rabbit hole that spatial audio entails: panners, renderers, mics, Ambisonics, Binaural, HRTF, Atmos, DTS:X, MPEG-H, AmbiX, FuMA, VR and on and on - in this "mega-chapter" I attempt to explain everything in as clear and succinct way as possible. Of course, if I missed anything do let me know...

Aside from that, I moved the table of contents into a two-column format - thank you Brett E. :)  shaving 10 or so pages off the book - which were quickly then gobbled up by the new spatial chapter :/

I'll keep following this space (unavoidable pun): I can't imagine Spotify and others won't follow suit, and hopefully, someone comes up with an Atmos tool that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars and person-hours to learn...

All my best,

Ziv (surgically removing spatial hype from fact as "Loopop"...)

PS As usual search for JUL2021 for the updates