music is about to change forever we're leaving stereo behind and entering the next dimension in sound with spatial audio featuring dolby atmos a premium audio experience where sound moves around you above you and behind you this is a completely immersive experience if you're a music fan it is like you're in the studio with your favorite artists i'm zane lowe and i'm here at the legendary capital studios and we're here to talk about
this new evolution and sound we have some real heavy hitters true innovators behind the board the godfather of chicago rap one of the most respected in the business no id the incredible sylvia massey a pioneer in adventure recording and the master mix engineer himself manny marriken we're going to be talking about dolby atmos and spatial audio and how this is going to deepen the connection between the artist and the fan [Music] [Music]
good to see you too how are you nice to meet you you too what's up bro how are you good good this is exciting it's very exciting for me because being such a fan of of each of you and the amazing work that you've done and what you've done
for my favorite music and my favorite artists just to be in this room is enough but i'm exceptionally excited about the subject like we've seen music and everything change and technology change over the years but we've been waiting
for this one right manny yeah man well thank you for inviting us having someone like yourself talk about what you know sound and the evolution and where we are in the world and what's ahead of us it's i'm sure i can speak for all of us but it's an exciting time for us you know i think the idea of innovation is something that artists are always striving for the idea of doing something new something fresh something that hasn't been done before
and and i know that what got me into music in the first place was hearing something i'd never heard before the idea of what was possible and so i wanted to start this conversation by by asking each of you what was the significant
moment in your life where you realized you discovered something that that really triggered that idea of what was possible like an innovation a piece of kit what was your toy what was the thing that was like this speaks to me
dee i would pick two things i wouldn't pick one i would i would call it the turntable yeah which just introduced me to listening to music and being able to change the speed and spin it back and and not just listen and then a sampler yeah which is to be able to lift something off of there and be able to use it as a tool to create that that was just a okay i don't have to keep learning the saxophone only or playing this piano only there's
there's other things that are unexplored and it and it opened me up to not being close-minded about sound art i mean both of those really opened up the door to this revolution where we're experiencing now which is this idea of of young artists and artists being able to create an immediate present moment on something that is at their fingertips and then distribute it direct to their audience and that sort of all starts around that time
um sylvia the way you make things sound is so fascinating to me and and i feel like there's so many surprises in all the mixes that i've ever heard you do so i'm dying to know what that moment was for you well i think it
uh one of the pieces of music that i that really affected me was um the pink floyd dark side of the moon it was so there was so much depth in it there was so much movement in it and it was uh it really sent me into uh suspension of disbelief so that was the
experience that that really got me into the music i was doing my own music at the time but the recording is the recording studio was when i realized that that what the engineer does in the studio is very much like what the musician does there was a device in the 90s called the roland um the rss the spatial simulator and it was a it had a brain a rack mount brain and a little controller that you could spin these dials and it would simulate
going around it didn't help the sound much it kind of thinned out the sound it was very early technology but it was doing what i wanted it to do and i used it on the tool records initially because i wanted that kind of surprise and i would
take little voices and like on the tool record the opiate record uh if you listen very carefully during one of the drum solos danny's playing you'll hear a telephone ringing in the back and that was the rss i threw the telephone sound
into the back of the room just to just to with the listeners you know so that you're you're really getting into this drum solo and then you hear the phone ringing i gotta turn down it's like i can imagine that tall with a perfect
band to experiment with on that level because they sure like to with the listeners i love them for it um manny you know master mix engineer i gotta know like where did it all start for you i was lucky enough to go to uh my high
school had a studio and uh it was i was in production class making a b playing some keys on the dx7 and my high school teacher said now you got to mix it i'm like what do you mean what does that even mean so uh he took me over
over to uh aboard ramsa 16x8 and uh tascam eight you know rio de rio eight-track and he basically took the floppy into it and all of a sudden we recorded every instrument and we were ping-ponging and the fact that you were able to i
just played the stuff maybe 20 minutes before and then he puts it through the desk and he's changing frequencies on the eq and you know and levels and balances and and i will never forget that moment of just this is what i wanted to do for the
rest of my life because when you're able to change emotion with frequencies you know we talk about it all the time but when it happens to you for the first time and you're a 15 year old boy that just completely
changed my my course you know i wanted to be a drummer and then i'm like no this is what i want to be i want to be in the studio because it's if i can change an emotion from someone else's you know art that's pretty powerful and i think we're blessed enough to be able to do that every single day of our lives you know i think that's a really important point about why we're having this conversation right now and and focusing on this idea of what
spatial audio is because to me what struck me when i heard it for the first time was the way i felt i realized it changed the way i felt about a song that i knew inside out but i felt differently i could put on maps by yaya's or i could put on black skinhead or bonnie ver or beyonce record and i could feel a certain way in stereo and i sort of know it's going to get me at that moment right because you've all done great work and that's
what you designed to do is to get me at that moment but i felt different it just felt different and i was experiencing a different emotional thing dion i want to ask you how you know it feels right when you're working on something
we were having a conversation earlier and i was talking about do it wrong to get it right sometimes and it's just about how it feels and versus the technical mathematics that are stated to be correct and as human beings we just look for
feelings all day so i know when a record feels good because i can feel an emotion or i can feel something so to speak versus just listening to it or it being correct or it being uh executed correctly it's just really about feeling for me
so that that's the goal for me as a creator is to just create use sound to create feelings not just sound but in this scenario that's when i know it's correct you know it's a language that i think you have to be able to speak in
order to translate if you have an artist in the room who's searching for a feeling words aren't really the best way to communicate a lot of the time and we all know that it's a it's a sensation almost that they're going for and it's hard to put that into words sylvia how do you how do you know when you're on the right path with an article how do you translate that that language to try to achieve what the artist is ultimately trying to get to
the point it's all about the song initially and the intention of the writer of the song so if you can maintain that and still create a beautiful frame around that idea then that's that's what we do the idea of spatial audio though um
is exciting because typically when we listen to stereo we have to kind of be in one spot and and we use the visual cues to uh to hear more than you even can imagine so the idea of the spatial is to take those speakers right out of
the room you can close your eyes and as we sit here in this room i can hear the reflection on the back wall i can hear over in that corner and i can hear the space that we're in so the listening experience for for the audience uh is really enhanced because suddenly you take those those two speakers out of the equation and the entire room becomes the experience which is ultimately what i think was mozart was trying to achieve when he
would create music and position the orchestra in certain points on the stage to make sure that that instrument reached that corner of the room and had a relationship with that instrument over here it's all about relationships isn't it it's amazing you know it's funny you say uh imagine the conductor right i mean he's got the sweetest spot in the room right he gets that energy from the orchestra but then he also hears the acoustic room
in the back so to me that's a a good way to explain what's happening right now because we i think we can all agree that this is a sonic revolution yeah not since mono in the 30s have we gotten a revolution quite like this right because stereo and by the way we've tried i mean not we but we've tried with quad and 5.1 and you know there's been more speakers and stuff but i think for the first time ever the consumer will finally get to listen to
what we've been talking about and what we've been trying to achieve and for me it's simple it's like am i listening listening to the music with the stereo speakers or or am i in the music and i think that's
a really important thing to keep in mind on how now we have kind of the power going back to describing the motion with frequencies now we may have the power to take you inside of it and that to me is it is a sonic revolution and that's why we're
super excited to be able to man to dive into that world and can you imagine now as creators you know and now you're creating anything what the creator is how the creators are going to create for it foreign that's crazy that's where it gets really really exciting yeah but see a lot of creatives i'm sure are asking you at this early stage and i know i'm getting asked the same question like what is it like what is it and we talk about being
immersed in it we talk about the idea of music coming at you or being present in other parts of the three you know this kind of circular environment but that being said i think some people feel like it's going to land in music that i did in cinema
which is like here comes the jet engine and it doesn't have to be like that it can be super subtle and it can actually you can do very little to achieve a lot with spatial audio right you know just the best way i can
describe it in video is going back to the rabbit ears right the rabbit here antennas and then you fast forward to like 4k right i mean it's still the image but it's just very defined and you're in it now i remember when they went from to hd
right it was like wow you can see everything and then video that that evolution happens so quickly right well that's about to happen in audio yeah uh sylvia you know you talk you've talked openly about your process
you know adventure recording this is very much in parallel with that because it's you're going out there and saying okay i could take that sound effect that someone else has created i could go out and create it myself i could go out there and see what it's like to be in the natural environment what is that going to feel and sound like so this must feel like a natural space for you to be moving into already the idea of spatial sound is very
exciting because i i consider rooms to be as important an instrument as the individual musicians and instruments in the song so when i record when i produce i oftentimes will do field trips and we'll go into a cave or we'll go into the subway or we'll go into this cathedral because not only do you uh enhance the the sounds that you're recording but your artist will give you a completely different perspective yeah if they're singing in a studio
or if they're singing in a cathedral you're going to get a different performance yeah i'm always amazed that more recordings don't take place in natural environments and i understand the idea of soundproof rooms and
you know the burgundy and black check and the windowless environment the standard kind of studio space but it always just blew my mind like why aren't we trying to move into an environment that's inspiring not just the way it sounds but inspiring
the performance you know and i think that's what's going to happen here is people are going to be performing their music differently and creating their music differently dion what really drew you to in the first place like i know that you're a believer i know that you love where this is going what was it the experience like when you first discovered it just opens up new doors it's like okay you can do sing a note and then you can have three
people sing harmony and then you go oh my god there's the choir the harmonies are cool yeah there's a choir now the choir is doing three parts harmony well what if the choir was here here yeah here here and here yeah what new feelings
can i now generate for people that haven't been felt i got emotional the other day when i was listening to latch by disclosure i love sam's voice and when sam harmonizes with himself it's like kind of close to perfection
for me and they the way that it just surrounded me i felt like it was i never heard anything like it and it was really moving and do you think throughout your life thus far in your career working with artists and all of you have worked with very innovative very forward-thinking artists that this has always been a place that that those kind of artists have wanted to get to but just haven't been able to yet do you think so absolutely so innovative
artists are always looking to push the envelope right uh and i think this is gonna be the perfect sort of segue to what that is now you have all these tools all these new tools and new spaces and new uh just where to go because with stereo
with two speakers you're just you're kind of trying to make the best out of it and we've i think we evolved into making really good records on two speakers uh the exciting part now is that we don't have those limitations
anymore because you always end up with it with two channels no matter how fast you want to take it no matter how much you want to pan yeah how much you want to do pressure delays any of it you always end up with these two speakers but it's really for me what's really interesting is that i i didn't i haven't left the experience of discovering spatial audio feeling like i got cheated by stereo i love stereo and i love all of the innovation
all the incredible work that's been done narrowing it down to two speakers and these records that were mixed in stereo all the records you've done and the millions of others that your peers have created over the decades are important they raised me i was born in stereo right well well me personally i i just always draw parallels so if i just look at you know you can watch a movie at home and that's okay or you can go to the theater and that's
just a different experience and and life is the creator's role is to help create use technology to create new experiences so it's it's not an either or it's about expanding that functionality because you know we just happen to be at
a point in time where we have everything in our hand and we can just listen and sometimes it cannot activate as many senses as we would want as a human so when you just give it a little more um again canvas you can now
create different opportunities for experiences and again you know we talk about those two speakers but i know they know better than me like when you go to mix a record and you've got to cram all this stuff and now you're slicing things away to make space for things and what if you just don't have to take away now now that you can just move it and now it just breathes differently it feels differently and now it can be in different venues and
different places because you don't have to overload these two speakers yeah and that's the exciting part because then you know you get some of these amazing artists to now get in there and the new generation now starts creating and and without the limitations that we've talked about like you said our limitations are how do you carve how do you shape to fit it into this box well now we don't have that limit limitation so can you imagine that as a
creator where now you don't have to think about carving now the essence of that sound and those frequencies which moved you and you wanted to go home and cry because for whatever reason they touch a certain thing inside of you
now nowadays you don't you don't have to carve it or shape it or anything it is the truest form because you have so much space and that equals to emotional connection to that song that artist that piece of music that's what i hope comes
across the most is that people that we all acknowledge that there's a much there's a deeper emotional resonance that we can get out of listening to our favorite songs 100 and don't get me wrong i walk around all day going like this like everybody
else because i'm into immediacy like everybody else it's part of my job is to be as up today as possible but i love how i feel when i listen to music and special genuinely like no cell like i just love how it makes me
feel look i remember the first you know atmos mix that i worked on and you know i kept going back to the reference of stereo because i wanted my my approach was always to kind of do this you know and just make it bigger i guess yeah i'll never forget when i was toggling back and forth just to kind of stay true to the stereo uh version and remember feeling like i was in it which is i never i mean all these years i never felt that
before and for us to get excited over something like that i mean the light bulb was like oh this is about to change forever not only for creators but for the consumer they're gonna again it's a different experience it's
not replacing anything it's just adding to that experience and like you said you may wanna stay home and watch a film this friday and next week you may want to go with your friends and see it much bigger it's not going to replace it
and i think that's really important to understand and remind ourselves that this is an amazing tool for everyone the revolution is here yeah i mean it's arrived and i think personally any stereo mix that i do from here on out
uh we'll also have an atmos version because it'll be set up and i really believe that this is um this is the way the music should be should have always been experienced that's a powerful statement you know because it it speaks i think to
the thousands and thousands of artists who have been moving with technology but haven't been able to get ahead of it and make the most of it and it does sort of feel the like anything is possible now from a creative point of view like i can
imagine when you go into the studio now to help guide any creative into a vision that they have in their mind that you don't have to say give me a few days to try and figure that part out this is the role of great tech
is to stretch our abilities like when we go in to create we want we don't want to be told no you know great art sometimes it's just throw it around because you know i grew up on mono oh no i'm not that i'm not that old but but at least in the stereo world you know again it's just always so many limitations and i think um people don't even know what what is possible and they've done this narrative like well people just listen to music on the
phone people just you know it's an mp3 world if that's all we want to create that's okay but there will you know we will have to listen to that as this grows in into another space at some point and we want to really not be limited by the prisons at the moment so we might be actually able to with spatial now and the help of the artistic community and incredible creative people like yourselves be able to actually stop music from degenerating
sound wise turn it around and encourage artists to actually think about the way their records sound even more yeah if you think about it every technology has moved forward right except sound yeah i mean that's right
we're at an mp3 which is probably the worst quality that we've you know heard so for the first time in a long time yeah now we can actually move forward and i think we've all been waiting for this for this day for a long time because you
know like i just went back to hd we're like man you can everything's so much better but audio is still not getting any better i think this is the first sign of things to come you know and uh and when the masses understand and they
feel it we're not here to preach what it is just gotta hear it when you hear it on your own you're going to be kind of you get you're going to be hooked and you're going to want more of that and the more of us that understand that
technology now the better music will get not only emotionally but sonically and that i think that's that's what we keep calling it a sonic revolution because we haven't seen this in our lifetime i mean remember when monitor stereo
beetles put the drums on the left side and the bass on the right we're not doing that anymore but there's going to be a lot of experimentation and there's going to be a lot of things that we're going to do that are not going to
necessarily be good but but it's here at least we have that option you know that's exciting sylvia are you thinking with that in mind i know that you love to record with artists in the room and you love to be as in the process as possible almost
like you're live mixing a record while you're making it or in engineering that you sort of think starting to create with you know the idea of mixing and dolby atmos in mind if someone's performing a vocal you're
thinking i know exactly how i'm going to manipulate that in an immersive space yeah it's it's exciting to have the new format because i'm i'm also a visual artist and i spend a lot of time painting so i kind of approach mixing in that way where you know there's lines and then there's negative space and these are all important while we're working in the mix we're working in the atmosphere we're placing things but then the spatial um
finished mix is uh is like a whole new experience i want to talk a little bit about the the relationship between the artist and producer the artist and mixer the artist and engineer and and being in that moment when you're trying to facilitate and understand what they're trying to achieve but you have to lead them into into a place where mixing in dolby atmos makes sense moving and creating music that ultimately ends up being spatial makes sense
how do you approach that right now well you know um to me stereo if i created the original mix i wanna i wanna have that essence because the artist producer everyone signed off on that right so i want to try to stay true to that
but imagine now the possibilities of creating it at most right imagine that producer the young you know up and coming producer that can now you utilize space to create emotions and different frequencies and sounds now imagine the possibilities
of that we you know we talk we always talk about stereo and the limitations of stereo as a creator now i can imagine some of those artists that i work with if they had all those colors at their disposal like right now it's made maybe monochromatic and now we have every color in the palette so it's new language you you you have to develop now additions to the conversations you've already been having absolutely but you know that's what we
did well now not week but when they went from monitor stereo right i mean i'm sure there were a ton of conversations on how we were going to utilize two instead of one now imagine how up for the last what 90 years creators have been performing with two speakers now now to be able to create this dolby atmos it's gonna open up you know endless possibilities for creators i remember the first time i went to italy and i went to the vatican and i saw
the the sistine chaplain of the sea like right it's just like oh i gotta walk over here and see it and and i go why what did he think when he had that much space to do he couldn't just paint a person or and it was just
absolutely a whole new thought process right so i think it's really you know important that like all of our creative minds kind of grasp what's possible with they'll be atmos and spatial sound and all the different um processes that
we will and tools so that we will use and then begin to rethink the product yeah yeah i think it's safe to say we're all most excited about what's to come the idea of new artists wanting to create and mix in dolby atmos from the creation point of view but what is your your current attitude about you know going back and and remixing and dolby atmos some of the music that you've already done and we've talked a little bit about this
manny we've talked a bit about dion as well sylvia i want to know what your perspective is where would you start and let's see if we can just pick one artist or one project where would you start on something you'd worked on
that you would that you've been dying to do adobe atmos mix in i work uh sometimes with a fellow named almond tobin and he's he's done music for gaming and films so the idea of taking that artist and and his um sounds are like no other person
he's creating sounds it's all him and now he's singing too so to take that artist to take that music and with the dolby atmos put it into this spatial world that we can all just kind of get a big hug out of and there's so many other artists like
things that people that i haven't worked with like radiohead i'm very excited about that i agree you know that that band would i think their work and what they do with nigel god rich and even you know some of
tom york's solid material would be incredible yeah all right i bought you guys some time who who gets the most amount of time to think about this there's a you know one that comes to mind is like john mayer's continuum you
know it's like that's like a that album always we always described it as giving us a hug and you mentioned that man it would be amazing to give it a real hug now you know so that that that would be one of those albums that i would just
love to revisit or or like if the opportunity ever came up for like the moody blues days of future past and that kind of experience dark side of the moon which is what started the whole role get ready i mean pink floyd they would i
would have jumped at it right all right dee any album from i would say earth wind and fire because the fact that there was already so much there and just to have a band with that many people yeah for me it's just about taking those
things that were more that kind of got had to get cramped into a space and just kind of letting it fully true in earthworm fire we're reaching for the stars on every level yes i mean i've seen them live and it was just i don't i think that they were reaching for the rafters like and maybe bobby mcferrin interesting weirdest thought that would just happen just to know like putting notes all over the place and really oh my goodness
somebody who not to similar mozart did a run of shows in churches and in acoustic environments with no amplification just with the choir and no electronic instruments whatsoever just voice in the church what i'm really looking forward to is
taking the mix and having it just be atmos or just be spatial i agree that was great it was really really great to be able to spend this time with you as i said at the beginning of our conversation i'm such a big fan of your
work but to be able to hear what the future holds gosh it's time to be excited i think artists and music is about to change forever we've said it i tr i really believe it to be true and if you want to find out for yourself then you can go and experience dolby atmos and spatial right now in apple music subscribers can listen to thousands of songs in a whole new dimension it really is time to find out what the future in music sounds like you