Renowned remixer, musician, and founding member of @PorcupineTreeOfficial @StevenWilsonHQ talks about some of his philosophies and practices for the classic album remixes he works on.
I really enjoy Steven's mixes. As an accomplished musician, he shows great respect for the music and technical heritage, seeking only to bring music into a new acoustic experience that wasn't available a generation ago. Well done, sir!
Back during Hand Cannot Erase, Steven Wilson didn't know what Dolby Atmos was so I educated him in our interview. Then he was skeptical anyone would ever install height speakers. I'm glad we now came full circle and he's mixing in Atmos. The latest Porcupine Tree album has a fantastic Atmos mix. 👍
Intriguing to listen to him break down how he conceptually assembles these remixes, I’ve never thought of listening to certain things until he pointed out what to watch for. It makes for a more immersive experience…I love this guy!
It’s amazing where vst’s are going and they are only getting better and better. With Steven’s ear our music will get the treatment it deserves if they take his same approach.
It's really interesting to hear his mix room on an open mic and hear how live it sounds in there with upper mid and high end reflections and room reverb.
I get it, you are the new , I sold all my crimson, replaced it with you! Amazing. Love you fripp !!!! Fripp has been a big part of my life, all the things that go with it all the amazing people, to much to be named!!! You made it all new . The influence mr.fripp had on you, Brian eno Daniel Lanois.changed the sound of music!!!! Yet my friends don't know who any of these people that makes me happy. Because I live it
Onya Steve! You are the man! If YOU say that digital is getting "so close" to the "excuses used" for those saying Analogue is better, we are all heading in a progressive direction! And you also say that you almost cannot tell the difference- well go for it "Analogphiles"- let's hear what you say about that....Digital is on par and very soon, will be better!
I always listen on headphones, so 7.1.4 is kinda “meh” to me. But his overall talk about remixing old albums is very interesting. I’d have to agree, remixing the old stems into a new mix using modern tools (but with an eye to the original mix) has been a great thing for music. I love how I can listen to classic albums but with modern mix/masters. It’s getting to a point where I can listen to Bruno Mars and Chic back to back and they aren’t fighting each other. Level match up, thickness matches up… It’s really nice. So, good on ya dude, this is all a good thing.
Atmos has been a game-changer. But I worry that in typical Dolby fashion there'll be another Atmos TrueHD yada yada in the future that'll fragment the industry.
@@AudezeHQ Yeah just saw the news. While I don’t trust Google themselves, I hope their initiative pushes the industry towards an industy-wide open and royalty free solution. Like AV1 hopped off of Google’s VP9.
Trouble with Atmos is that its a confusing space to enter for most, I only realized you can get" Atmos" thru headphones. But do you need special Headphones? How do you listen to it, thru what service? Do you need a special player or can you use your Iphone or Android? What do you look for? Many questions that are hard to get a clear answer to. Atmos , to me, is still a Niche thing that only people wealthy or lucky enough to have a dedicated system and the space can experience.
Any headphones will work with Atmos when it's properly configured: it sends a two-channel "binaural render" to the headphone feed. This (or something like it) is what you get when you listen to the "immersive" versions on most streaming services, which can be done on any computer, phone, tablet, etc. In other words, you don't need a dedicated multi-speaker system anymore!
Staying true to the original mix to me is so important as a listener. Give you a example, Michael Bublè’s song Haven’t met you yet sounds amazing in stereo, mixed by Chris Lord Alge. The Atmos mix done but Humberto Gatica, sounds so wimpy.
The problem with any system that has more than two speakers is, its an extremely small market to cater to. The general public listens to music in very poor listening environments. Atmos is nice if you have the budget to truly enjoy it in an optimal room.
The percentage of people listening to music on headphones is much higher now than speakers. With personalization (personal HRTF) the quality of rendering with headphones is increasing with newer computational power available even of cheaper headphone. With headphones, rooms are almost eliminated.
@@AudezeHQ One might say earbuds get more generally use than headphones. How might this affect the HRTF? I would think it doesn't exist or work because of the placement in the ear canal. ???
This is why Apple’s push for binaural is so important. They continue to evolve it as well. We’re about to get personalized spatial profiles in iOS16, which will significantly boost the perception of spatial depth for the listener.
I think the listening figures are 80-90% of Atmos is experienced on headphones. ie Apple Spatial if on Apple device, Dolby Atmos if in Android. The binaural and HRTF is improving too. I'd argue for music Atmos isn't the best format either for the engineer or the consumer there are spatial formats that literally do not alter the stereo and mono source. A lot of what makes Atmos, Atmos is the filtering and metadata but it's generally flat detriment to the recordings imo. Systems like Mach1 are the best for music from my mixing in both. Luckily you can transcode to Atmos so you don't have to work in Dolby's little bubble of approved DAWs and Apple obsessive workflows with DAPS either now.
@@zedd_centauri Problem with Apple Spatial in headphones is it isn't Dolby Atmos. None of the binaural processing in the studio reaches Apple Spatial as Apple chose the older DD+JOC format which isn't capable of carrying binaural data. This is a big gripe of Atmos engineers, in that only Android devices play the same headphone experience they heard in the studio from the binaural render.
Interested in why the need for tape saturation emulators, when the recordings have been taken from the original multitrack tape? Does something get lost , even at the highest quality digital recording?
Back in the days before digital, there would normally have been two more stages of 2-track tape after the multitrack (mixdown and master). The master would have been used to cut the lacquer for pressing the vinyl LPs, or for duplication to other tape formats (cassette, 8-track, etc) for release.
If only the rest of us had access to those multi-tracks we could also indulge our fantasies about what we would like our favourite albums to sound like had we done the mixing. WHilst I bought all his Tull remixed albums I was disappointed cos they do sound like the originals and not original. Fortunately I have the plugins and tools to split them and do some rudimentary remixing myself so yeah I understand exactly what he means about the digital era, computers and plugins, but I like to create something new something different something exciting !! not just copy and emulate the original
Steven mixes on Audeze LCD-5s. You can also see a pair of Audio Technica closed-backs on his desk, which he uses for tracking (where isolation is more important than sound quality).
Let's just say there was some editing we had to do so as not to breach any contracts. All will be revealed as soon as it's legal to do so, there are more videos in the works from this shoot!
@@AudezeHQ Sweet! I can listen to him talk all day about this stuff. I have a feeling though that the recording that he was working or or talking about is for The Who Who's Next album which came out in 1971. I'm pretty sure this was already mentioned by him not long ago in an interview.
Steven Wilson is the right person to work with the first 6 album from Genesis. The "new mix" in 2009 are awful and need a reallyyyyy new mix with the original sounds that they put out in the 2009 mix and even with the first albums without Peter Gabriel. I hope Steven or somebody like him that knows how to mix old albums, works in Genesis albums Dx
Any headphones will work with Atmos when it's properly configured: it sends a two-channel "binaural render" to the headphone feed. This is what you get when you listen to the "immersive" versions on most streaming services.
Okay, how can this guy be such an audio technology genius, but he's still drinking his tea (presumably) out of a ceramic mug? Hasn't Steve heard about the technological advances that they have made with insulated cups that can keep a drink at a constant temperature for a much longer period of time?
Chris says: The mug was a self-regulating polymer with a highly dense heat-activated surface layer, both of which were purpose-built to retain the temperature of whatever was contained inside. Also it was filled with delicious cappuccino made by Steven's charming wife Rotam and served piping hot, it didn't last long enough to get cold! ;-)
Atmos and Auro3D are quite different. Auro3D is a channel based delivery system. In addition to 7.1 it has height channels (and voice of god channel). Atmos is a object based audio format. During delivery, the Atmos renderer takes the objects and renders them channels / speakers. You can go from stereo (or binaural) all the way to 128 speakers.
After listening to him here I am shocked that he left off the beautiful delay on Snowy Whites first Guitar Solo on Rick Wright’s Wet Dream Album. That alone kept me from buying it and sticking with the original mix.
The cool thing about Atmos is that the binaural fold-downs will continue to get better (much like 3D video, which in the early days was not so good but has improved greatly). As the tech for fold-downs gets better, it's fairly easy to render new versions from the multi-speaker mixes.
@@AudezeHQ, I keep hearing it will get better, but in the meantime, the market is getting flooded with awful-sounding content that the consumer never asked for just like 3D TV that failed.
@@AudezeHQ binaural is a sad compromise and money grab from apple. And the fold downs sound really really bad compared to any stereo mix. Enough with atmos. MONO is still king for several reasons.
I think Atmos may survive as a high end format for cinemas and home theatre/music systems, but I do agree that for the mass market stereo is the way forward.
Atmos is actually getting really good on headphones (and will continue to get better). This is how most people will consume immersive content, since there's no requirement to invest in additional equipment or special setups.
So Steve is riding the final wave of Boomer recordings being remastered for retired granddads who want to go out ''Hearing them as if for the first time''. FFS, I was hoping Jimmy Page remastering LZ for the 500th time would be the end of that and the world could look forward to then having good NEW music again. Oh, well. Looks like that ''blessing'' of everyone having a recording studio turned into the curse of solo writers working alone, in a rush, trying to scrape together 1/4 to 1/2 of a half baked idea to hawk on the internet and even that's beginning to fall apart. Same kids who 15 years ago said ''Data centers and web design are the future, man'' are still believing in the big lie from corporations that just want to send the schematics to China and dump 10,000 employees. Same sht as software replacing hardware, it just makes the people at the top able to strap on their golden parachutes while we all pay for the ''Upgrade''. Not impressive in the least. But, bedhair Steve's still got a gig so it must all be ok, right?
Can someone please swipe the master for "And Justice For All" and have Steven remaster it to how it should've been done originally? I would be forever grateful!
We live in the right time where people like Steven Wilson underrstands wht the original mixes did and recreating it in the digital domain, because he knows what the analog equipment is and do, and how it sounds. In decades to come engineers, mixers would not know what an analog console, effect or compressor is, acts or sounds, and the work of imitating them would become much harder wothout a useum knowledge.
well, he didn't grow up using that gear, and he does fine. History isn't letting analogue go any time soon. And when that day comes and people forget.. it won't matter. They are tools. Music continues regardless of the tools. People will like it and not care. As someone who did 30 years of pro recording to tape... I'll never look back to the headaches. I get so much more work done with modern gear, and the music STILL sounds like me be it the 70s or 2023. We are the stamp, tools are the tools.
Atmos is a trip to nowhere! But it’s part of the development that the music itself is less important. Incredible albums are incredible in mono, stereo and whatever. Atmos adds nothing relevant to it. For crap music which is around us everywhere since many years, it’s the next ridiculous thing to hide the bad music of nowadays
Part of the beauty of Atmos (and some other new immersive formats) is that they can be rendered to a 2-channel binaural mix for headphones. This means you can listen on headphones with no additional expense.
We suggest the last line to be "Buy some Audeze headphones, y'all" so it fits the rhyme better. Perhaps Steven could re-record the vocal into a commercial for us lol ;-)
@@AudezeHQ for the first time in his life probably. Good luck with that! And if it turns out nice, I would appreciate a pair as a gift, too, for being the inspirer lol ;-)
Most of his 5.1 mixes of classic albums sound as if the elements got dissected and placed across 5 speakers and the result almost always sounds artificial Nevertheless he did a great job on Lizard and Islands
This is similar to 3D in movies. If you see older 3D movies, someone will always appear on screen with a stick and poke it towards the audience to let them know they are watching the movie in 3D. It used to be very gimmicky. But later movies like UP, Avatar etc, started using 3D more organically and to move the story forward. UP from Pixar especially used 3D very cleverly. Spatial audio for music is still in its early gimmicky days. It will improve as access to mixing tools becomes more common.
