The reproduction of Atmos in headphones is beyond the line I’m drawing for this series, Bart! It [Atmos in headphones] is not something I am very familiar with, which might become obvious in the rest of my reply but nonetheless let me explain my apathy-driven ignorance…

I am very cynical about surround/immersive formats in general (a surround format by any other name is still a surround format). I have seen numerous surround formats come and go in my life, and the recurring dynamic is: 1) studio owners invest huge sums of money in multiple speaker systems and room designs, and then work hard generating excitement about it to recoup and hopefully capitalise on their investment; 2) respected mixing engineers make endorsements saying they will never mix in stereo again, and 3) other companies start offering competing formats/standards. And what are the recurring outcomes?

For (1) it is the ‘Field Of Dreams’ effect (“If you build it, he will come”) except Shoeless Joe never sticks around, and the additional speakers are invariably removed or covered over because nothing says ‘loser’ louder than supporting a dead format. For (2) they invariably end up mixing in stereo again as the new surround format fails, because (3) competing formats always lead to ‘format fatigue’ where potential adopters siege it out to see which format will emerge as the standard and, as a result, all competing formats die of market starvation.

If Atmos can recreate in headphones something equivalent to or better than the binaural recording mentioned in this instalment, but with all the benefits of multitrack audio production, it will be amazing and I’ll be lining up for it. In the meantime, stereo has been with us since the 1950s and has outlived every competitor.

The only legacy I can think of from the preceding surround/immersive formats that remains a significant and influential part of today’s popular music production is SSL’s Quad compressor. It was part of a late 1970s future-proofing gamble in anticipation of a four-channel surround format becoming successful – which is why SSL’s 4000 series consoles had front and back stereo buses (relatively simple to achieve) but no joystick on every channel for panning between them (super expensive, fiddly and unjustifiable). The Quad compressor, and its imitations/derivatives, has become an essential part of popular music production. We mostly use it in stereo, of course, reinforcing my belief that anything in the surround/immersive space that doesn’t work in stereo ends up floating for eternity in the surround/immersive outer space.

I agree about the similarities between Neumann’s headphones and monitor speakers. I have discussed how that kind of translation is achieved in the second and third instalments. I suspect that Neumann have created their own equivalent to the Harman Target curve, based on using their own monitors. Not many headphone manufacturers can do that because they don’t make monitor speakers as well. It’s very interesting when a company manufactures both and can use one as a reference for the other; the whole goal of a target curve suddenly becomes useful in the production stage rather than just a matter of listening preferences for consumers.

I am glad you’re enjoying it Chris!

Well, I was prompted to recall an AT Editorial yester-milenia or at least yester decades about silibane and how it was heard everywhere in conversations, the writer of those early AT mags slips my memory; but his prayers are answered with the solitude of a smart phone, the chatter diminished. Anyway I realize that in the infomation highway that is Pro Audio, many like me have sucumbed to the Audeze or other for a reproduction that goes beyond a speakers we cannot afford and no longer belong as reference sets for verb tails and the like. But I do like where this series of yours is going and dont forget to take is over the edge of Atmos systems, can a headphone ever be used to replicate the speaker arrays?