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The Format Ambassador

Steven Wilson

As someone who’s always been a champion of sonic excellence and high-resolution audio, I was very flattered to be asked to be the brand ambassador for High End Munich back in 2019. Obviously, a lot of the people who usually go to these trade shows are the people who make the equipment, press the products, and press the records. Since most of them are not the actual people who make the music, I was very happy to go there and talk to industry people and other audio enthusiasts about my perspective on hi-res audio from a musician’s point of view. 

More recently, I’ve become a big fan of Dolby Atmos, and I kitted my new studio out for 7.1.4 listening and mixing. No question, it’s the next logical step in terms of a completely immersive audio experience. Being able to distribute sounds not only in the horizontal plane but also now in the vertical plane is an incredible opportunity for a mixing engineer. It’s a gift for anything with sound-design elements involved—my own albums included—and being able to put those elements above the listener is so much fun and very engaging. 

I would say half of my invitations for remixing now are for Atmos rather than 5.1, so it’s definitely something that’s catching on inside the industry. Remains to be seen if it will catch on domestically, but when you have a band like The Beatles embracing Atmos, that’s a massive boost for the format. It means a lot of people are going to go and invest in Atmos setups just so they can hear the greatest pop group of all time in the ultimate way. And then they’ll start looking around for other Atmos catalog entries to see what else is out there to experience in the same way. 

That said, a lot of musicians—Neil Young and the late Tom Petty being the exceptions—are not really all that plugged into the world of high-resolution audio. They don’t understand the market. I know this because I’ve done a lot of hi-res remixes for many artists who, when they first come to me, don’t really understand what 5.1 is. They don’t understand the difference between 48, 96, or 192; they don’t understand any of that stuff. Imagine having to explain to artists you’ve admired your whole life what 5.1 is, and even what Atmos is. I’m happy to be the one doing it, though.

Just in case you’re wondering, I do love vinyl too—but I have to say, not at the expense of CD. I’m still a big fan of the CD, and I hate all this anti-CD talk that amounts to something like, “Vinyl is the only format I listen to.” I’m very much of the opinion that certain music, such as classical music or anything where silence or space are the key elements, is great on vinyl—but not all of it is. If there isn’t a Blu-ray available with a hi-res audio mix on it, I’d honestly rather have the CD than the vinyl. I can’t stand to listen to something where the silence is all surface noise or inner-groove distortion—but, of course, I love the tactile tangibility of vinyl. Being able to hold an album in your hands is such a beautiful thing.

I’m still very much committed to putting out my own releases on as many formats as possible, and I’ve even done a cassette for my new album, The Future Bites. It looks pretty cute, I must say. People seem to love the idea of the cassette, which I suspect is mainly nostalgia. I have a certain nostalgia for cassettes too, having grown up in the 80s. But are the people buying cassettes actually listening to them? Who knows—but I’m not going to skip the opportunity to get the potential added sales for my own album from a collectible format. 

I remember the time I was in secondary school in England, back when I had a very good friend who was the resident hi-fi buff. For months, he would be telling me about how he was upgrading his amplifier, his record deck, his speakers—just about everything in his system. Finally, he invited me over to his house—at which time I found out he only had three records! He had Making Movies by Dire Straits, Time by ELO, and a Steely Dan album, which was probably Gaucho. All of them are great-sounding albums, I grant you, but he was constantly listening to only those three records in regular rotation with just miniscule, incremental differences in the reproduction. In the meantime, I had my own crappy record deck, but every time I got money, I would go buy another ten records! 

The point is, the music itself is just as important as the gear you listen to it on, if not more so. I know there are always going to be those people who only have Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, and that’s the only thing they’ll ever listen to. There’s nothing you can do about that. 

I do hope I got my message across to everyone I talked to and listened to in Munich in 2019. It’s very flattering to be thought of as someone who’s a champion for high-resolution audio, and I’m happy to be that person. I’m always happy to be that person. 

Steven Wilson is a prolific guitarist, singer, songwriter, and Dolby Atmos and 5.1 original music producer and remixer of high accord. The Blu-ray edition of his 2021 solo release, The Future Bites, includes the first of his many Dolby Atmos mixes to come. In addition to his own work, Wilson has been the man behind the board for hi-res 5.1 mixes for the likes of his previous band Porcupine Tree, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, XTC, Gentle Giant, Hawkwind, Tears for Fears, and Simple Minds (to name but a few).

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