Arturo G. Alvarez (aka Arturo Alvarez), Grammy member, award winning music producer, sound engineer, singer, and musician, based in Los Angeles, has been working on 5.1 surround sound since 2010 when he began applying it to film and multiple genres of music including salsa, meditation music, pop and classical. With Dolby Atmos now “here to stay” with Apple Music’s spatial audio and Dolby’s rapid adoption by other streaming services and film productions, Arturo is in his element: “I’ve been training my ears and brain for this immersive experience for thirteen years. This is a very exciting moment for me creatively”.
Although engineers have already been working with this feature for films, applying it to music is completely different. “Music has a different way of dealing with Dolby Atmos”, says Arturo. “With music it has to be structured as a whole. Sure, you can play around with objects that go up and down in the atmosphere, or surrounding you, but the sound has to be glued in a way that you can experience it either as a real live performance, as if you are sitting in a live audience, or as the particular atmosphere that the producers and artist imagine. They may want the listener to feel in the presence of the music, or even fully immersed as part of it.”
“In the 1950s, stereo sound recordings started a big boom, and the experience of music became magical. People felt like they were in the third dimension! Most of the recordings were actually really binaural as tracks. They were widely separated and recorded in two different channels from two independent sources creating the left and right spectrums. Sound engineers were experimenting with it and releasing recordings to the public that, if you listen to some of them today, you feel like the drums are completely on one channel and the vocals on the opposite one along with the guitars, etc. By today’s ear they can sound very divided. Then in the late 1960s stereo mixes got much better! You could experience a balanced recording where everything made more sense. That same issue is happening today with Dolby Atmos. Many engineers who work on films, panning and positioning actors’ dialogues and effects (like planes passing by or gunshots) are being given music to work on. As this is relatively new – they are still in the experimental phase. That’s why most of Dolby Atmos music recordings today have that immersive experience, but they don’t have the right sound for a record or for a live performance”.
“When music recording first started, the engineer had to give a specific position to each player, to each element- singer, musician, etc., around one or maybe two microphones that would create a sound that would make the audience feel like they were present at a live performance even if they were in the comfort of their homes. That sound of an actual live performance was captured on wax or magnetic tape. Sound engineers today have to have that same vision, that imagination, of the end result, of the sound, and keep focused on the specificity it takes to achieve that sound. Each production is different – it could be for a video game, for a band, or for an orchestral concert. In each case, not only does the engineer need to make the audience feel it the way it’s supposed to-but he or she has to align the sound to the vision of the artist and/or producer.
Arturo continues to bring his signature mastering sound, desired by his artists and the labels, to all his Dolby Atmos mixing and mastering by continuing to enhance his sound with analog reel to reel tape machines. So far in 2023, Arturo has completed Dolby Atmos projects for DJ Paul Oakenfold’s production with Suzie Del Vecchio (Universal Music - Sonic Boom), Sonora Dinamita, Majo Cornejo, Mirley Cauich (Warner Music-ADA), Iván Barrera, Matías Natale, Nanci Guerrero, and Alexandra Raven. He will be announcing more new releases shortly.
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