Acoustic Sounds
Dolby Atmos "Pet Sounds" Press Event
By: Michael Fremer

June 3rd, 2023

Category:

News

Giles Martin "ZOOMs" In" to Introduce His Atmos "Pet Sounds" Mix at New York's Dolby Screening Room

the mix master intended to attend but a family emergency prevented it

"Pet Sounds" didn't have a stereo mix for Giles Martin to fix. The album was meant for mono and mixed to mono because that's how Brian Wilson hears. Wilson produced the original mono mix and all acknowledge its brilliance. The same is true of George Martin's mono Beatles mixes, produced not because Martin heard in mono, but because that's how most kids back then consumed music. The pre-production strategies targeted the mono releases and with limited available tracks the stereo mixes were often compromised. Neither The Beatles nor the producer cared as much about the stereo mixes, especially on the earlier albums, though many Beatles fans still prefer them, flaws and all.

Giles Martin was tasked with fixing his father's stereo mixes, taking advantage of modern technology and the results are commendable even to "original pressing" purists. For instance does anyone really prefer hearing George Harrison singing "Here Comes the Sun" isolated on the right channel instead of centered?

The Pet Sounds task was different. The mono original issued in 1966 was the only available legitimate version. The "Duophonic" release was Capitol's grotesque 'fake stereo' process best ignored. Using the original multitrack tapes Mark Linett created a new stereo mix for 1997's The Pet Sound Sessions 4 CD box set release that provided a kind of techno-guide for Giles Martin's later Beatles re-mixes. Fortunately, wise people on both sides of the EMI/Capitol enterprise understood the value of the multitrack work parts of The Beatles recordings and Pet Sounds and the tapes were not erased and re-used. Linett's stereo mix was later issued by Analogue Productions and is an excellent vinyl stereo issue version of the album.

In the ZOOM call Martin discussed the Linett stereo mix and the original mono mix. As I recall his comments he said while he listened to the stereo mix and consulted with Linett, ultimately he found the reverb too "wet" for his tastes and chose to model his Atmos "spread" after the original mono mix's drier reverb profile. At the same time he rightly said that mono was an "immersive" format and that a wide spread does not necessarily produce "immersion". He also made clear that he understood that pulling elements too far apart could destroy musical cohesion. So, with the mono mix as a guide and the later stereo mix as a reference, he set about producing his Atmos mix. Of course, he also talked about the music on Pet Sounds—how Brian brought in jingle-writer Tony Asher to write lyrics and how it influenced The Beatles (and everyone else at the time making pop music)—how it prodded The Beatles to make Sgt. Pepper's.... But surely you already know that.

The lights went down in the Dolby Screening room and the Pet Sounds Atmos mix began. Let's start with this: a movie theater is not an appropriate venue for album music playback, whether monophonic, two channel, four channel or multi-channel. The enormity of the sonic images produced by the Dolby screening room's system, never mind the inappropriately excessive SPLs, turned many of the music's percussive elements into sound effects and Brian Wilson and the other Beach Boy vocalists into menacing giants. The opening drum slam on "Wouldn't It Be Nice" was isolated and so far removed from the rest of the music it sounded like a dynamite explosion in another room.

The Atmos mix in the theater threw familiar musical elements, once comfortably tucked within the tidy mono mix, into vast stretches of isolated space where they appeared almost detached from the main event. The wood block on "Let's Go Away For Awhile" became an enormous event instead of an accent. The overall theater sound was bright, hard, "cardboardy" and off-putting—the opposite of "immersive". Familiar string elements that should sound "springy" and "plucky" sounded hard and edgy. I was expecting that because before the Pet Sounds playback there was a Dolby video advert played stupidly loud that sounded awful and "cardboardy". A lightning sizzle had no textural or transient sizzle. It sounded like undifferentiated white noise. So I was prepared.

What I was hearing was everything Martin said he'd hoped his mix would avoid. The album is heavily percussive and rhythmically complex, but the theater's spatial and "sound effects ready" presentation, combined with the excessive SPLs (admittedly I was sitting in the front 1/3 of the room) produced relentless pounding and a diminution of the mono mix's generous textures and along with it the dense mysteries buried within that make the mono version so immersive. With everything isolated in space—unraveled— yes, you could hear more of the individual elements in the mix, but the mix itself and the art behind it went missing.

As the album played the analogies flowed in my head: "He's turned Pet Sounds into an Enoch Light album (of course the title track sounds like an Enoch Light production combined with an "I Love Lucy" Wilbur Hatch orchestrated ending). "This is like filming porno under fluorescent lights". "Dolby should open at Atmos restaurant and serve the world's most famous dishes in Atmos where instead of tasting the dish, each spice and ingredient sits isolated in your mouth. You can taste every element as never before but the goddamned dish is missing!"

When it was over and the lights came up, there was at first silence followed by the most tepid applause that sounded more obligatory to avoid embarrassment than an enthusiastic reaction to what the audience had just heard. When the floor opened for questions the obsequious ass-kissing began. "Oh, Giles, you've done it again!" followed by meaningless questions required to cover the opening ass kiss.

On the way out a video cameraman asked attendees about the experience. I looked into the camera and said "A movie theater is not an appropriate place to present a record album". I might have said "a stupid place".

Happy Ending

Pet Sounds

Can we all agree that the Pet Sounds album cover is among the worst and ugliest ever created for one of the greatest albums in recorded popular musical history? When it was first released I mistook it for something Capitol's budget Pickwick label would produce and I fully expected to see a collection of older Beach Boys tunes haphazardly chosen. Tacky, generic type face, ugly composition, 1/3 of the cover a green band on top, a terribly stilted picture of "the boys" uncomfortably feeding farm animals. Awful! It looked nothing like the album sounded!

On Friday June 2nd the album "dropped" in Atmos on TIDAL. It was supposed to also be on Amazon but i couldn't find it and I don't subscribe to Apple Music. I couldn't find it on TIDAL either until I learned it was only on TIDAL's phone app, where I found it and was able to use Airplay to get it into my dCS Vivaldi One streaming DAC.

Played back in stereo on a good two channel system had me rescinding everything I thought of the mix when I walked out of the screening room other than that yes, a screening room is the STUPIDEST place on earth to present a music album, I don't care if it's multi-channel Atmos or not, especially since 100% of the young people this is aimed at are never going to hear Pet Sounds in the full Atmos spread version. They'll hear it on headphones or as I did at home in stereo.

Played back in stereo on big speakers, produced a masterfully mixed two channel spread, with textures intact and an overall warm, not icy cardboardy, timbral balance, similar to what I've been hearing in the mono mix (best vinyl version IMO is either the DCC Compact Classics edition or the Carl and the Passions "two-fer" or the single LP Reprise edition released at the same time). The mix is firmly "in the pocket" and cohesive, leaving no elements "out to dry". Perhaps the vocals on the first few tracks are too "out front" for me, but that's about the only criticism i had. The bottom end is deep and firm, transients are clean and the midrange warm and inviting. You want the record to sound and feel like 1966 and it does.

Martin's remix is preferable to Linett's overly "wet", somewhat glassy one IMO (A/D converters have improved since 1997 for sure) and it's got a more intimate feel overall that's similar to the original mono mix. Do we really need at Atmos mix? Your call. But I think Giles Martin has produced an excellent Atmos mix that sounds better in stereo at home than it did spread across the universe in a movie theater. If you have TIDAL or Apple Music and can Airplay it to your streaming DAC I think you'll enjoy the listen.

The original mono tape has gone missing. How about a new AAA mono mix that duplicates the original?

Comments

  • 2023-06-03 04:31:17 PM

    Azmoon wrote:

    Mixmaster? More like Son of Mixmaster.

  • 2023-06-03 07:49:05 PM

    bwb wrote:

    so the Atmos mix sucked where you heard it, and the stereo mix sounded good at home, but what about the Atmos mix in a proper venue, like a home system properly set up for Atmos? Seems like if you are going to publish an article about the Atmos mix you would have taken the time to hear it presented properly. This makes little sense "I think Giles Martin has produced an excellent Atmos mix that sounds better in stereo at home than it did spread across the universe in a movie theater ".. So what? Who cares how it sounded in a movie theater because none of us are going to hear it that way. We are interested in how it sounds at home on our Atmos systems.

    • 2023-06-03 09:20:57 PM

      Malachi Lui wrote:

      he says the atmos mix sucked in the dolby screening room (because a movie theater is a bad place to present an album), but when streamed in stereo, the atmos mix was good. most people will only hear the atmos mix as a binaural-optimized sort of downmix anyway. that's basically how atmos comes on streaming services because they know most people are only gonna hear it on headphones. this is a really informative article about the issues with atmos on streaming:

      https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/why-your-atmos-mix-will-sound-different-on-apple-music

      • 2023-06-04 04:07:57 AM

        bwb wrote:

        Sorry, reviewing an Atmos mix by commenting on how it sounds in stereo is a waste of time for anyone interested in the Atmos mix. Obviously Michael does not have an Atmos system but many of us do. Does it make any sense to review a stereo mix and use a single mono speaker? Of course not. It is equally absurd to review a 7 or more channel immersive Atmos mix with 2 speakers. It really is silly to even try to argue that it does.

      • 2023-06-04 01:10:56 PM

        bwb wrote:

        One final point... Listening to the Atmos mix from Apple Music, my Dolby renderer outputs 7.1.6. Clearly not binaural. Cleary not something you can properly evaluate with stereo speakers ... . BTW it sounds pretty good.

    • 2023-06-05 11:53:50 AM

      Michael Fremer wrote:

      I have a very nice 7.1 channel home theater system. I do not have an Atmos set up. Most of the movies I like to watch don't depend upon sound effects. I'm sure a report on what it sounded like in 7.1 wouldn't satisfy you either. I'd have to set up a full Atmos system and report what I heard. I'm just not going to do that. I think Malachi is correct: most listeners do not have nor are they likely to encounter a full Atmos system other than at a home theater store or an audio show. In any case, you listened to it and liked in on your Atmos system so I'm not sure I understand your anger here.

      • 2023-06-05 01:54:38 PM

        bwb wrote:

        anger ?? Sorry if it came off that way. I am not angry, I am frustrated that both of you are making judgements from a position of ignorance i.e. a lack of knowledge. Malachi keeps referring to binaural presentations which is something very different. He claims most Atmos mixes are terrible yet it appears he has never heard one. Again, binaural is not Atmos. Yes, some attempts are better than others, and some are terrible, just like many early stereo attempts with hard L-R are terrible. But like stereo, when done properly it is wonderful....... Your assessment appears to be based on this bad presentation and a single Elton John mix. It appears you both don't know what immersive audio is nor have you experienced it. This is evidenced by the fact he keeps referring to binaural and you refer to it as "sound effects." IT is NOT about "sound effects." It is about immersion. This not the place for a lesson in immersive audio but as professional reviewers if you and he are going to comment on Atmos you should take the time to get educated about it. If you both choose not to participate I have no problem with that but if you are going to discuss it you should know what you are talking about. ... When stereo was introduced it was the same chicken-egg situation but the number of immersive titles is expanding rapidly. There is a high resolution immersive audio streaming service about to launch and the number of people who can listen to it properly at home is expanding too. Anyone who has a home theater and there are millions can pretty easily add Immersive to it with just a few height speakers...... So "anger" is not part of the equation. Calling people out for their lack of knowledge and understanding is. Thanks for taking the time to listen to my point.

  • 2023-06-04 01:15:10 AM

    TemporalDissident wrote:

    This is a odd review. We have a sort of half-broken Atmos listening experience and then comments about how an Atmos mix sounds in stereo?!

    • 2023-06-04 03:06:23 AM

      Malachi Lui wrote:

      one could argue that just like how mixing engineers test their stereo mixes in mono, hearing an atmos mix in stereo truly tests how good or bad it is. also see my comment above.

      • 2023-06-04 04:10:33 AM

        bwb wrote:

        Ridiculous. Atmos is immersive , it is all around you and object based. It simply can’t be properly evaluated with 2 speakers.. end of story

        • 2023-06-04 04:19:10 AM

          Malachi Lui wrote:

          the way that atmos has fifty billion places to pan things can so easily be abused. there is a legitimate case for hearing it in stereo as a test for how cohesive it is, in addition to hearing it through headphones or on an atmos system to understand how immersive it is.

          i listened on apple music using AT M50x headphones. i hear the same thing michael hears, though personally i think a couple percussive details are a bit more accentuated than i'd like. still, it's a very well accomplished atmos mix, a rarity in this time since so many atmos releases sound like assembly-line 'stereo converted to atmos' similar to how duophonic was mono 'reprocessed for "stereo"'.

          • 2023-06-04 04:32:43 AM

            bwb wrote:

            How can you say with a straight face it is a “well accomplished Atmos mix” when you haven’t heard it in Atmos? You have no idea how well the Atmos was done if you used 2 channel headphones. Wow

            • 2023-06-04 04:40:51 PM

              Malachi Lui wrote:

              most people hear atmos binaurally. that is how about 90% of the population consumes atmos music thanks to streaming services, mainly apple music. hearing it in headphones still gives you a sense of the space, which yes, is very well accomplished. sorry that some of us aren't willing to revamp our entire systems when stereo is perfectly fine and atmos might not last very long. also, the vast majority of atmos mixes out there right now are terrible. this 'pet sounds' is a notable exception.

              • 2023-06-04 06:03:12 PM

                bwb wrote:

                really? you don't even have a way to properly decode Atmos yet you categorically declare that the vast majority of the mixes are terrible? Have you ever even heard a properly decoded Atmos mix? Immersive audio is not anywhere near what it was just a few years ago. There are incredible mixes coming out now on a daily basis including this one, Pink Floyd, Elton John, The Beatles, etc. and all the new music specifically created with Atmos. There is no problem if you choose to remain behind. There is a problem if, as a reviewer, you make dogmatic statements about things you are simply assuming....... the end

                • 2023-06-05 12:01:03 PM

                  Michael Fremer wrote:

                  I heard an Elton John Atmos mix at an audio show on an appropriately sized system well set up and I thought it was dumb mono spread stupidly around the room.Atmos is not "ahead" and not liking it is not "behind". However thanks for that post because now I better understand where you are coming from—a ridiculous place where not adapting what's new means one is "behind". I don't live in that world.

    • 2023-06-04 03:37:42 AM

      Michael Fremer wrote:

      Why was it “half broken”? Because it didn’t sound good?

    • 2023-06-05 11:56:28 AM

      Michael Fremer wrote:

      It wasn't half or in any way broken. It was an Atmos mix played back in a fairly large movie theater, which to me is not an appropriate venue for music for the reasons I wrote about. I was reporting on an event I attended. There's nothing odd about it. Then I went home and listened to the Atmos mix in stereo.

      • 2023-06-16 03:12:59 PM

        TemporalDissident wrote:

        Not sure this will post to article comments. …

        I stand by my frustration with your review.

        The essence of bruce bosler’s criticism is that you are presenting a “review” of a mix without making the effort necessary to experience it as it was intended to be presented.

        Shame on Dolby for having a listening event in this type of space. (Perhaps this was the easiest place for a marketing dept to host a PR event?) Disrespectful to the band and the music (and not great for the Dolby brand, either).

        I’ve never listened to Atmos music in a large theater. I imagine that a large room exaggerates the spatial effect of Atmos in a way that would be very disorienting for music. It The gunshot percussion and “giant” Wilson brothers doesn’t sound appealing at all.

        Movie sound producers mix specifically for that environment.

        But that is NOT the type of room Martin remixed Pet Sounds in, or for, and that is not the type of room that Atmos music fans will listen in.

        Another terrible way to evaluate an Atmos mix? Headphones. A 7.1 system is not much better,…(because these aren’t Atmos-enabled systems). In my parlance, all are examples of “half broken” test or review conditions.

        If you want to review Atmos mixes, use an Atmos system in an appropriate space. Is the “juice” of an immersive experience worth the “squeeze” of added investment and effort? That is every individual’s call, and that cost/benefit question also haunts almost every decision in our HiFi hobby. But neither of these questions constitutes an argument for reviewing Atmos mixes on non-Atmos systems or in movie theaters. There are other arguments embedding in the comments above about how “most people will experience Atmos” (ie - on a stereo system ) and how Atmos gets “abused” in mixes. Fine. Legitimate questions to discuss.

        But again, neither validates what you are implying, which is essentially that “you don’t really need to listen to an Atmos mix on an Atmos enabled system or in a proper room in order to write a professional review about it…”

        In your comments, you write “I'd have to set up a full Atmos system and report what I heard. I'm just not going to do that.” Then don’t do Atmos reviews! No problem.

        Unless you are willing to give the time and effort demanded to experience Atmos as intended, you should refrain from reviewing it. Continuing to opine on it while not making that effort seems like a backhanded way to be dismissive of the technology.

  • 2023-06-05 06:46:26 PM

    Jeff 'Glotz' Glotzer wrote:

    While Atmos has some nice potential behind it, it does indeed seem to be aimed at home theater enthusiasts, which are declining in numbers over the past 2 or 3 decades. Does the market need a sound processing approach devoted to home theater people?? To people of a certain age, and those that listen to music over their theater processors, maybe? But it seems like a silly notion when a better format like MQA which is inherently NOT-lossy nor worse sounding than any DSD-based format is soundly rejected by Boomers on theory alone! "We're being ripped off" is the mantra of those haters, and it's utter misinformation. Robert Harley (Complete Guide) wrote a comprehensive, bullshit-destroying, totally expert overview of MQA's complete superiority over other 'bloated" digital formats, and the world still hates it. The same holds true for multichannel audio sound- soundly rejected by the buying public en masse. To pretend that Atmos is the answer for music in this venue (home theater) is way more absurd (than either MQA and Multichannel) and to assume there would be others that would foot the bill for a complete system revamp is even more silly. To the subsect of home theater buyers that are MOST interested in movie playback (and those that would dive into these really over-issued Atmos music offerings) seems to be a commercial farce, despite however important and great Atmos may be as a technology. Treat MQA like shit and Atmos great? Pure political bullshit by Boomers, destroying the world as we know it, simply because their fed up... "with bullshit". Hilarious and foolhardy.

    • 2023-06-05 06:50:30 PM

      Jeff 'Glotz' Glotzer wrote:

      And Bruce, no matter how much you like it, or feel its valid, it is absurd to expect any one else to buy into this music format DESIGNED for home theater heads. Just wishful thinking, no matter how well executed. Maybe go to a Home Theater website and tell everyone there how great it is? Or just rant on the 3 people on this website that may or may not have read your comments? Wrong audience indeed.

      • 2023-06-05 08:01:22 PM

        bwb wrote:

        I appreciate your well reasoned response, but you have misinterpreted my intent. My "rant" is directed at the misinformation being spread here. It is not intended to convert anyone to the Atmos cult. Each individual and the market can decide what to embrace and what survives, but they need facts to make a decision, not opinions based on outdated, incomplete, and incorrect notions about it. Along those lines your notion that multichannel has been rejected en masse seems a bit off base given that the largest music streaming services in the world (Apple, Amazon, and Tidal) are all in on Atmos and a large % of new music is being released in that format..... https://www.dolby.com/experience/music/... Apple and Amazon don't invest so heavily in something if they don't believe it has legs. Yes, a lot of it is marketing hype intended to draw people in with the new shiny object, and many consumers can only play back the binaural version if it is embedded, but the Atmos is there too. Given the rush by the large services to embrace it I wouldn't write it off as dead just yet. The future of MQA is a completely different story.

        • 2023-06-06 11:57:47 AM

          Michael Fremer wrote:

          Atmos is being forced upon the mastering world. It’s almost extortion. So the content will be there but I’m not convinced many are listening at home. And the tend line is away from multi-speaker setups and towards sound bars. That’s a real trend.

          • 2023-06-06 02:41:26 PM

            Chris wrote:

            Being forced to do it is certainly how the guys in the business who've been doing stereo for 50-60 years feel. That's understandable. Most of the mixing engineers, who do the "real" Atmos work, because mixing is much more critical when it comes to Atmos, love it. Many mastering engineers I talk to actually dislike it because the -18 LUFS standard is removing much of the work they previously did, and many mixes don't even get mastered anymore. It also makes a lot of sense to meet consumers where they are. If they listen to Atmos on headphones, soundbars, laptops, or full blown home systems, it's all good. It really doesn't matter. If the trend if toward soundbars, and that means we get to enjoy the benefit of Atmos mixes because of this trend, even better. let the larger markets select the format, and let high end companies perfect it. That's the recipe for long term success. High end deciding what should work and trying to push that boulder up hill, never works (DSD, MQA, etc...) Long term I see a V shaped trend with people enjoying more vinyl on one side and immersive formats like Atmos on the other, with digital stereo in the middle.

          • 2023-06-06 03:31:20 PM

            Joe Whip wrote:

            Citation needed. I also think having choices is a good thing.

      • 2023-06-05 09:45:49 PM

        Chris wrote:

        Hello Jeff, I don’t blame you for not knowing more about Atmos. Most people are in the same boat.

        Atmos for music is aimed mainly at headphone users, with an installed based in the billions. A benefit for people with Atmos systems at home is the full immersive experience that so many people enjoy. A single file delivers everything from 2 to 16 channels. Atmos frees artists and engineers from the bounds of channel based audio by providing a three dimensional space in which to place music.

    • 2023-06-05 09:33:00 PM

      Joe Whip wrote:

      Once I saw your opinion on MQA, you lost me. Could not disagree more on MQA. As for Atmos, it can be an incredible at home music experience. Have you ever heard such a demo in a home system? As for a system designed for movies, you do know that stereo was first designed for movie theaters? Imagine arguing that mono is just fine for me, you stereo loving movie fans are full of it? Absurd. It is technology. It can be used for many purposes.

  • 2023-06-06 09:56:12 AM

    Diogo wrote:

    Thank you for this review. I gave this new mix a listen and it's easily the best stereo version I've heard of this album.

    Will there be a CD/SACD version? I'd love to own this in a physical format...

  • 2023-06-06 12:17:30 PM

    MrRom92 wrote:

    Really? A new AAA mono mix? At best that’s just silly, at worst… sacrilege. There are plenty of good AAA mono copies out there if you really want one, you even mentioned two of them. What would a new mono mix even accomplish?

    I think a new proper stereo remix, made using newer transfers of the multis, would be a better use of time. I have no problem with the 90’s stereo mix but I would say there is room for improvement.

  • 2023-06-07 06:03:03 PM

    Jeffrey C. Robbins wrote:

    I have the Carl & The Passions twofer vinyl with the Pet Sounds mono mix “as Brian intended it,” courtesy of Michael’s recommendation (thank you). It sounds great. But, my main system is also set up for Dolby Atmos 5.1.2, and I like how the lossless Atmos version sounds as well. So, I am in both camps — stereo vinyl and Dolby Atmos — when it comes to listening to music. I can understand why Michael wasn’t impressed by Dolby Atmos music in a theater, although that, if done right, is cool as well. For that, I’m thinking back to having heard Aerosmith and Maroon 5 live, in Dolby Atmos, at the Dolby Theater in Las Vegas. It just sounds like the Atmos demo Michael got wasn’t good, period. JCR

  • 2023-06-16 06:17:20 AM

    TemporalDissident wrote:

    I stand by my frustration with your review.

    The essence of bruce bosler’s criticism above is that you are presenting a “review” of a mix without making the effort necessary to experience it as it was intended to be presented.

    Shame on Dolby for having a listening event in this type of space. (Perhaps this was the easiest place for a marketing dept to host a PR event?) Disrespectful to the band and the music (and not great for the Dolby brand, either).

    I’ve never listened to Atmos music in a large theater. I imagine that a large room exaggerates the spatial effect of Atmos in a way that would be very disorienting for music. It The gunshot percussion and “giant” Wilson brothers doesn’t sound appealing at all.

    Movie sound producers mix specifically for that environment.

    But that is NOT the type of room Martin remixed Pet Sounds in, or for, and that is not the type of room that Atmos music fans will listen in.

    Another terrible way to evaluate an Atmos mix? Headphones. A 7.1 system is not much better,…(because these aren’t Atmos-enabled systems). In my parlance, all are examples of “half broken” test or review conditions.

    If you want to review Atmos mixes, use an Atmos system in an appropriate space.

    Is the “juice” of an immersive experience worth the “squeeze” of added investment and effort? That is every individual’s call, and that cost/benefit question also haunts almost every decision in our HiFi hobby.

    But neither of these questions constitutes an argument for reviewing Atmos mixes on non-Atmos systems or in movie theaters.

    There are other arguments embedding in the comments above about how “most people will experience Atmos” (ie - on a stereo system ) and how Atmos gets “abused” in mixes. Fine. Legitimate questions to discuss.

    But again, neither validates what you are implying, which is essentially that “you don’t really need to listen to an Atmos mix on an Atmos enabled system or in a proper room in order to write a professional review about it…”

    In your comments, you write “I'd have to set up a full Atmos system and report what I heard. I'm just not going to do that.”

    Then don’t do Atmos reviews! No problem.

    Unless you are willing to give the time and effort demanded to experience Atmos as intended, you should refrain from reviewing it. Continuing to opine on it while not making that effort seems like a backhanded way to be dismissive of the technology.