Abbey Road at 50: the ATMOS Remixes

The Abbey Road box released in 2019 marks the first time that Beatles songs are released in ATMOS format (on the Blue-ray disc). Since the 'One' DVD, all subsequent releases featured Dolby 5.1 mixes, but these were mostly rather underwhelming. But the 5.1 and Atmos mixes of Abbey Road mark a turning point; I can imagine that these mixes will become the preferred way to listen to Abbey Road, relegating the stereo mix to older audiophiles....


What is Atmos? It is a surround system like 5.1, but with sound coming form above as well. True 3-dimensional sound. Home Atmos systems are becoming affordable, but are not yet as widespread as 5.1 systems. To give some feeling for how amazing the Atmos mixes are, we have isolated the (8) Atmos channels and used them to produce remixes of the tracks on Abbey Road.


3 of these tracks are full remixes (Come Together, Something, I Want You), the other tracks are just short highlights of the Atmos channels. To showcase the way it works, we start with Her Majesty. This song starts with a chord, which actually was the closing chord of Mean Mr Mustard. We play 4 ATMOS channels (each twice) so it becomes clear that the instruments playing the chord are distributed over the channels. Listening to a real Atmos system, a different instrument would come at you from each corner of the room. Most of these remixes are just samples of what can de done with the Atmos channels. Don't worry, we have already produced full remixes of the major tracks, which will appear in the Cellar on a later date.