Mixing Apple Music's First Spatial Audio Release with Dolby Atmos Support

Danish artist Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg – aka Sitrekin’s – Open Chest recently became the first spatial audio release with support for Dolby Atmos on Apple Music. The track was mixed by Dyre Gormsen in West London’s Eastcote Studios. The singer-songwriter and producer duo explain why the track was the perfect sonic launchpad for Apple Music’s new spatial audio offering. 

How was Sitrekin’s Open Chest chosen as the song to launch Apple Music’s new lossless format available on iTunes using Dolby Atmos?

KT: Dyre was actually mixing Open Chest in stereo at the beginning of the year and suddenly he got into Dolby Atmos because of lockdown. 

He said, ‘I have this new format and it's a three dimensional way of working with sound’, and I thought, ‘okay, this sounds amazing, let's go for it!’ When I heard the Dolby Atmos mix, I had this feeling of almost coming home – everything was just in place. Finally I could hear this music the way I heard it inside my own head.

DG: Dolby Atmos felt like the perfect canvas for Kirstine’s music in that it's very atmospheric and filmmic. It’s almost like it couldn't exist in stereo – of course it can – it sounds great in stereo as well, but Dolby Atmos definitely gives it a different dimension. 

In the States they've been doing Dolby Atmos for quite a while now, but nobody has really been pushing it in the UK with the new productions in that sense. They've been turning around the archives in studios here for a while, but for us, it's very important to be on the front line, as well as of course picking up the old records and the stuff we've done in the past. 

For this new way of working, I think Kirstine is pretty much the perfect artist for it – she's ahead of her time.

Dolby Atmos Music technology lets you precisely place and move sounds, and you can create up to 128 objects and bed channels in a Dolby Atmos mix; was mixing in Atmos a steep learning curve?

DG: It took me about six months to really finalise the way I wanted to do it, but it didn't take me long before I had it sounding pretty great. As long as you always use your ears and your intuition I don't think you're going to go too wrong. 

It is very technical and it takes some learning, but when you're there, it's actually not difficult at all. Dolby Atmos gives you the freedom to move stuff around, and all of a sudden instead of two stereo channels you have 128 objects to mix into, so that just gives you a much wider picture. 

You don't have to stuff everything down the same pipeline, so to say. It gives you a different feeling when you listen to it because stereo is very often pushed to the limit and is really loud, whereas with Dolby Atmos, all of a sudden it's very dynamic. 

Of course it can be loud, but it can also be very quiet, but super refined. I'm really hoping that this will also help the stereo format in regards to not pushing for super loud masters. I think when people start discovering this, it will change the way we think about music.

Do you think that more artists will embrace creating music in Dolby Atmos Music going forward?

KT: Some people have been very sceptical about a Dolby Atmos mix – would it be a fragmented experience? Or would it be a whole experience of things working together? 

For artists it’s super inspiring to be able to have a much wider way of expressing yourself in terms of music production, and I think it’s going to be something that people want to do more.

DG: I think this will depend on the artist and how excited they get about this. If, like Kirstine, you get inspired by a medium like this and don't necessarily want your drums to pump down the middle, for example, then there's definitely room for rethinking how you want to create your soundscape for your songs. I've been through all the different phases of recording music and mixing music, so it’s great to go with the evolution of sound. 

Dolby Atmos is more than 10 years old; it's something that's been going on in the film industry for a long time, and we're just adopting it into the music industry, basically. You still feel that it's a film medium, and I think this will get better with time – music is going to take this on. 

They're working hard on developing it and they're constantly moving, so it's going to be really interesting to see where this is going to go. It's very early days.