Spatial audio can be a divisive issue for hi-fi and audio fans.
The burgeoning technology has gained huge traction over the past few years, with various forms of surround tech – Dolby Atmos being perhaps the most prominent – seeking to redefine the listening experience by going beyond traditional two-channel stereo and placing musical elements more precisely across an immersive, three-dimensional space.
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This is a properly dedicated facility, a specialist space designed to make spatial audio shine. If you’re not going to become a prostrated convert here, in all likelihood you’re not going to become one at all.
The setup in this room includes Augspurger cabinets as the main monitor system, as well as Meyer Sound Ultra X20 surrounds and Meyer Sound Ultra X23 overheads. If you want the full equipment list, you can find it on Larrabee's official website.
The demonstration I receive is brief, but it’s enough to leave a lasting impression. Breezy indie-funk hit Feel It Still by Portugal. The Man pumps out through the multi-speaker system, with the monitors at the front handling the bulk of the cargo as those sprinkled musical elements – bass guitars, backing vocals, the occasional one-off musical effect – bounce and fly behind and above me courtesy of the on-wall monitors dotted around the room.
The rendition is one of the most impressive implementation of Dolby Atmos I have heard. Forget soundbars and wireless headphones – this is the technology being used as the engineers intended. And that really shows in how precisely each sonic element is placed within its particular location.
Feel It Still doesn’t sound simply like a spatialised or processed rendition, but rather a wholesale reinvention of a familiar track that shines anew and grants the tune an entirely new aspect. Not only does everything sound distinct, but the spatial effect seems to transform the listener’s perspective. For perhaps the first time, I am hearing music not as an observer but, it feels, like an active participant.
It’s a strange sensation, but a thrilling one. As musical strands fly and float around their various locations across the soundstage, the boundary between music and listener seems far more permeable than when listening from a fixed source.
Perhaps it’s the nature of being in the middle of the storm, perhaps it’s the multi-thousand dollar equipment in play, but this feels like Dolby Atmos doing what it's supposed to do – dropping you into the heart of the music itself.
Spatial performances can often sound confused, muddled or simply incapable of producing the intended ‘immersive’ effect, but Larrabee’s facility seems capable of genuinely fooling the ear into believing that sounds are emanating from their intended location.
Sometimes, the effect is even exaggerated, so that distant echoes appear to be emanating from a space far beyond the confines of what is still a modestly sized listening space. For instance, when an instrument is supposed to sound ‘distant’, it really does appear as though it could be coming from another room entirely.
Okay, not everyone can afford to rent out one of the most renowned recording studios in the United States, but what Studio 4 at Larrabee does demonstrate is just what this controversial tech is capable of when it’s really firing.
So many renderings of spatial audio tech are aiming for something they don't really achieve, like a sketch artist trying to remember a painting from scratch. At Studio 4, however, this is a canvas being drawn exactly as the artist intended, with all of those particular elements appearing exactly where they are supposed to.
Spatial audio isn’t going anywhere, with many manufacturers (and quite a few sound engineers) doubling down on the technology. JBL’s SVP of Global Engineering, Sharon Peng, seems to think so, describing spatial audio as “more than surround sound”, and as something which is “dynamic, adaptive and emotional”.
The phrase “future of audio” was even uttered during our guided tour – though not by Sharon herself, we should point out.
The lesson here is that spatial audio can, in the right hands, be genuinely transformative. It’s still got a way to go if the tech is to trickle down into mind blowing headphones implantation, but the idea of immersive sound elevating music beyond the gains wrought by strides in audio resolution does seem to have some credibility.
Before, I wasn’t entirely convinced that that could be the case; now, I’m in danger of becoming a genuine convert. I just need to move to LA…
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