Spatial Audio File

Whenever the calendar turns over to a new year, there’s a pretty good chance a new Steve Hackett solo album will also be in tow and ready to greet our collective ears. And lo, what do you know—early 2024 has indeed blessed us with the presence of the onetime Genesis guitarist/vocalist’s (yes) 30th solo album, The Circus and the Nightwhale (InsideOut Music). Naturally, the 1CD/1BD mediabook version of the genre-straddling Circus includes a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix of its 13 tracks done by Hackett’s longtime keyboardist, Roger King. During a recent Zoom interview, music editor Mike Mettler and Hackett discussed the importance of sound placement in the Nightwhale surround mix, what his favorite Genesis song in 5.1 is, and what Genesis track they’d both like to hear most in Atmos.. . .

It seems like everyone is riding the immersive audio wave these days, which ultimately isn’t such a bad thing at all to see our favorite format reach the ears of as many spatially interested and Atmos-curious listeners as possible. With that in mind, here are my choices for the ten best and most thoroughly immersive audio albums of 2023, which appear as follows in reverse order from 10 to 1. . .

Trevor Rabin is all in on leaping directly into the Atmos-mixing universe, having immersed himself in composing in surround sound for the 50 or so films he’s scored over the past three-plus decades—plus the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix he supervised for his new solo album, Rio. Recently, Rabin—the onetime Yes guitarist/vocalist/composer behind the somewhat unexpected No. 1 hit single from November 1983’s 90125, “Owner of a Lonely Heart”—and music editor Mike Mettler got on Zoom to discuss the creative surround arc of Rio, how his mentor influenced his compositional-oriented way of thinking, and what songs from his era of Yes would benefit the most from new surround mixes. . .

ABC didn’t exactly fit into the expected early-1980s new-wave mold—and that was just fine with the band’s co-founding lead vocalist and chief songwriter, Martin Fry. To that end, ABC’s debut album, June 1982’s The Lexicon of Love, cut a wide compositional swath that deployed a mixture of broadstroke keyboard flourishes, grand orchestral swells, and call-and-response vocal passages—and now, it sounds even fuller in its just-released 40th anniversary Dolby Atmos mix on Blu-ray. During a recent Zoom call with S&V music editor Mike Mettler, Fry discusses producer Trevor Horn’s and ABC’s original intentions for how The Lexicon of Love ended up sounding, why he feels listening to it in Atmos is akin to “climbing inside a crystal kingdom,” and what he likes best about how Steven Wilson mixed it for Atmos playback. . .

After scoring big last year with his stellar Atmos mix of The Beatles’ seminal August 1966 album Revolver, producer Giles Martin was more recently tasked with giving the Atmos treatment to The Beach Boys’ benchmark May 1966 release, Pet Sounds. Martin got on Zoom with music editor Mike Mettler from across the Pond to discuss how he made sure his Pet Sounds Atmos mix stayed true to the music’s “real” intent, what his approach to dealing with all those infamous Beach Boys vocal stacks entailed, and how he made sure “God Only Knows” comes across as being nothing short of heavenly in its Atmos incarnation. Read on to glean all the immersive details accordingly. . .

Producer/engineer Josh Evans has been tasked with bringing Pearl Jam’s storied catalog into the Atmos universe, and he’s already spearheaded a number of great immersive mixes for various catalog entries of theirs ranging from the band’s explosive 1991 debut Ten to the broader strokes of 2020’s Gigaton. Recently, Evans got on Zoom with music editor Mike Mettler from the friendly confines of his studio HQ in Seattle to discuss why Pearl Jam trusts his Atmos instincts, the rigorous multitrack tape-to-digital transfer process he follows, and why it’s important to sometimes just let the music breathe. Read on to immerse yourself accordingly. . .

Where did all the time go? Time, flowing like a river. Time is on my side (yes it is). Time to play B-sides. Are you eye-rolling at all my lyrically borrowed time comments yet? Anyway, it’s high time to take stock of what we’ve heard and what we’ve learned this past calendar year, seeing how a) time flies, and how b) time is indeed all around us—just like the best Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos mixes are, in fact.

With all this time sensitivity in mind, it seems to be the exact right time (last one, I promise) to comprise my Top Ten list of the best immersive audio tracks of this past year. As always, I’ve thoroughly spec’ed and checked all of the tracks I’ve selected here by way of my personal deep-dive listening sessions on both my home system and headphones alike. You’ll find each and every one of them amidst the cavalcade of Made for Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos tracks within the ever-expanding immersive audio libraries on Apple Music Unlimited, Amazon Music, and Tidal.

Enough with all the time-wasting—here are my choices for the ten best, thoroughly immersive audio tracks of 2022, which are, in reverse order from 10 to 1. . .