Recorded from Las Vegas, the live album from the Imagine Dragons concert has recently been available on streaming platforms. Issue ? The sound reproduction is not at all up to par with the technology used.
Since July 28, streaming services like Apple Music and Amazon Music have been delivering what sounds like good news for Imagine Dragons fans. The group has released an album version of its last concert in Las Vegas, offered in Dolby Atmos quality, while the group had served as guinea pigs for the first concert in Dolby Atmos at CES 2023. The show recorded in the album however, dates from September 22, 2022, while the CES concert took place in January 2023.
On paper, the recording of a concert has all the arguments to prove that Dolby Atmos brings a real plus when listening to music. Its objective is to guarantee a better immersion, by playing on the more precise spatialization and on the addition of a vertical datum to the effects. The best example? A helicopter that would pass above your head, with the feeling that it is really on the ceiling. The same can be applied to a concert hall, to fully capture the experience.
Nevertheless, after having listened to the Imagine Dragons concert in several configurations, we have to admit that the result is disappointing. This is the opposite of good publicity for Dolby technology, since switching to stereo allows you to listen to the concert in a much more audible way.
This Imagine Dragons concert in Dolby Atmos is not a good advertisement for Dolby Atmos
Test with Dolby Atmos compatible headphones
Proof that Dolby Atmos is accessible today: an Apple Music subscription (there is no quality-based formula), an iPhone and a pair of AirPods Pro are enough to taste it. Unfortunately, it’s not the Imagine Dragons concert that will convince you of the added value normally guaranteed by the format.
When the headphones are set to “Audio Spatial”, a parameter that allows you to take advantage of Dolby Atmos, the rendering is muffled. The singer’s voice is crushed and everything is flat. We are far from the promise of increased immersion, and it is terribly disappointing (no kidding, try it yourself if you can). We expected to be amazed, to appreciate a level of detail without any equivalent, thanks to an ample and precise soundstage. We are finally far from the mark, since the voice of the singer seems masked by the applause and the cries of the public.
To top it off, when you go back to stereo mode (that is to say by deactivating “Spatial Audio”), listening is much more pleasant and dynamic. The 3D effect disappears completely, but we finally hear Imagine Dragons singing.
We repeated the experience with headphones compatible with Apple Spatial Audio: the new Beats Studio Pro. The observation is similar: we prefer to listen to the album in stereo rather than in Dolby Atmos.
Test with a Dolby Atmos compatible home theater
Has Dolby Atmos capture been designed for a more advanced configuration, with speakers placed all over a room? Listening to Dolby Atmos with earphones or headphones remains illusory when compared to a real installation combining several intelligently positioned speakers. So we put the Imagine Dragons live album to the test of the best possible Sonos setup: an Arc soundbar paired with a third-generation subwoofer (yes, we could have two) and two Era 300s in satellite. Under these conditions, you can enjoy rendering in 7.1.4. But, again, the rendering is disappointing.
The proposed spectacle remains resolutely frontal, with insufficiently solicited rear channels. We also had fun deactivating them to see the difference, and there was almost none, a sign of a failure on this point… It’s less muffled than with headphones, but it’s still disappointing.
There is another concert offered in Dolby Atmos on Apple Music: that of Indochina, broadcast at the Stade de France. There, the Dolby Atmos is expressed at full speed, with this impression of being in the building, in the middle of the public (when you deactivate the surround speakers, you lose a lot). The comparison is painful and, for a demo, we will favor Indochine over Imagine Dragons.
What should be remembered? That you shouldn’t always rely on macaroons and that Dolby Atmos remains a sensitive technology that forgives nothing. Everything was in place to make this Imagine Dragons show a showcase for Dolby Atmos, but something got stuck (the recording was too complex for a perfect transcription? An encoding problem?). That’s a shame. Like all formats, Dolby Atmos remains dependent on the content offered. This opinion applies to the few non-live tracks available on Apple Music, with some that bluff and others that we prefer in stereo as they are distorted.
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