Roger Ebert would have agreed with you, same with Woodie Allen, even back to the Lumière brothers in the 19th century. Méliès would vehemently disagree.sporkles wrote:I'm not sure if I can make up my mind myself; a part of me thinks it's silly and unnecessary (probably the same part of me that finds stereo manageable and multi-channel intimidating).
good insight, agreed.The other part of me thinks that in modern film soundtracks, the line between FX/sound design and music is quite blurry.
from what I've seen it takes Hollywood two or more years to go from overusing a new technology to chilling out and letting the art speak rather than the tech overwhelm the art. the first 3D movies made heavy use of putting things right in your face. it was Coraline IMO to finally chill with that effect. they did it once at the beginning and not again (maybe again in the trippy garden dance scene?) with sound I've sat in on screenings that compared 5.1 to EX to Atmos playback, once I heard Atmos I didn't want to go back. the first movies were either really subtle like Brave or just poor mixes like the latest Die Hard movie. I didn't get out to see Gravity or The Hobbit but I heard those mixes were messing with peoples' heads.I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this. Could you find yourself thinking "having that trumpet come from behind totally MADE this movie, man!"? Or do you rather think that the music doesn't need to surround you and that it may in fact be distracting?
the difference is that the bullet goes around the sides of the room with 5.1 and EX. with Atmos you get a much better sense of it coming at you as it traverses the ceiling. again, a lot of this is with the sound engineer and how they use the tools. end of the day an Atmos theater can do exactly what a 5.1 theater can. if the 5.1 sound placement sounds better, they can do that with Atmos. if the Atmos placement sounds better, you can't do that with 5.1. Atmos can also do stereo, if that's what's called for.I don't know if I'm just a nay-sayer, but I find things like 3D glasses and Dolby Atmos to be nothing but gimmicky fads designed to keep gadget-crazy consumers interested. Basic surround is great, but do we need 64 channels to convince the audience that a bullet is passing by?
per my response below, as more complex surround systems become the norm in society, as clubs get cool installations and theaters rent out their spaces for non-cinema uses consumers will want this. once Sonar or Bitwig or Logic or PT gets it, Live will follow.I digress, but this is where I'm coming from. So, just to recap: is stereo enough for the music track? (And will Ableton introduce surround support ... ever?)
it all comes down to the artist. another old-ish example of surround is The Flaming Lip's album Zaireeka. it's 4 CDs that you plat at the same time from 4 different stereos. it's meant to be a party album, think of a college dorm atmosphere, you run around, see who has a portable stereo, get 4 of them together, try to hit play at the same time while being almost too wasted to coordinate such an effort. then the album plays. sometimes not all the stereos play sound, sometimes it's all of them. point being it's an artistic take on what can be done with more than one channel. BUT for some forms of music it's just silly, remastered Simon & Garfunkel in 64 channels is a bit silly. remaster a symphony so it sounds like you're sitting in the middle of the stage? that could be cool. a full on class electronic band making full use of a system like that could blow your mind.Actually: does anyone think that music in general needs more than two channels?
another sign is that Primus recently remastered Sailing The Seas Of Cheese in 5.1. when asked why Les said that he wanted to try his hand at the art of surround mixing.
we've had users up in here that were DJing live in multichannel environments (hambone1, crazy dude.) I can easily see that trend continuing. surround sound in general will proliferate, speakers will be cheaper, we'll find more ways to hide speakers (thin film for example.)