Spatial Audio File

Alan Parsons has long been acknowledged as a pioneering surround-sound mixer/producer all the way back to the early days of quad, and now he’s finally triangulated his sights on the kind of project we’ve all been waiting for—namely, by taking the maiden Dolby Atmos remixing voyage into his own deep catalog as the co-mastermind behind The Alan Parsons Project. Parsons’ initial APP-in-Atmos foray appears on the Blu-ray that’s included in the new 4CD/1BD/2LP Super Deluxe Edition box set for their May 1978 release, Pyramid, via the ironically named Cooking Vinyl label. During a recent Zoom interview, Parsons and music editor Mike Mettler discussed his overall Atmos goals for Pyramid, what he was able to “correct” in Atmos, and his dream Atmos mixes for other artists. . .

Sum-sum-summertime is officially in full-full-full swing, which means cueing up the latest five-spot of my all-new Atmos recommendations here in Spatial Audio File can only lead to many fun, fun, fun hi-res listening times ahead.

As always, each track herein has been fondly and thoroughly test-driven aurally via personal listening sessions on both my home system and headphones alike. As you’ll soon find out when you scroll and read on down, the artists themselves totally get why listening to the very best offerings of immersive Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos tracks available in the always expanding Apple Music library is the right way to go.

And this week’s quintet of winning summertime fun immersive tracks are. . .

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. . .

The Beatles’ Revolver further solidified the creative validity of the rock album format when it was released in August 1966. Seeing how Revolver’s Super Deluxe Edition multidisc LP/CD box set incarnations have been officially released via Apple/UMG today, October 28—not to mention the inherently excellent Revolver Atmos mix by producer Giles Martin concurrently being made available digitally—I had to find out why I needed to get that Atmos mix into my listening life. Therefore, Martin and I got on Zoom together recently to discuss exactly that. He also shared with me what his late father, original Beatles producer George Martin, thought of his multichannel mixing skills. These are all perfect topics for this month’s Spatial Audio File (he said he said), so read on, read on. . .