Spatial audio has arrived on BandLab, with a whole new curated collection of beats to play with. Pre-mixed for Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound technology, 360 Reality Audio beats are the essential resource for anyone looking to move beyond stereo.
Until you’ve actually heard what spatial audio sounds like, there is no way to really understand its potential. So, if you want to get a sense of what spatial audio can offer, all you have to do is start listening.
In this post, we dive into the newly released 360 Reality Audio beats catalogue and look at the genre-specific benefits a 360 Reality Audio mix can bring to a song. Grab a pair of headphones and follow along.
Take a tour through 360 Reality Audio beats
There are 40 360 Reality Audio beats currently available to browse on the BandLab platform, covering trap, R&B, soul, country, EDM, rock, and hip hop.
As a general rule, a 360 Reality Audio mix will feel much wider and have a bigger dynamic range. If you check out 360 Reality Audio beats like the R&B-inflected Black Diamonds, or the electro-rock of Working the Door, you should be able to hear straight away that the 360 Reality Audio mix is far more expansive than the dense, compressed sound of normal stereo.
From a production perspective, every genre is mixed slightly differently, and this is even more true as we move into 360 Reality Audio. A 360 Reality Audio mix offers unique benefits for every music genre, and it’s important to get a sense of how it changes the listening experience – whether you’re writing country music or EDM.
Hear the difference: Trap
Let’s listen to Silent Love. This beat pairs a silky, Latin-infused guitar line with a classic trap beat and heavy piano chords. Let’s flick between the stereo version and the 360 Reality Audio version – to do this, simply click on the beat’s title card once it’s playing and toggle ‘Enable 360 Reality Audio’ on or off.
In the stereo version, the guitar melody line is fighting for space and sometimes gets swamped by the bass and piano chords. If we jump over to the 360 Reality Audio mix, the guitar sounds much clearer, and we can hear all the nuances of the players’ performance. An even bigger difference can be heard in the percussion and bass. Now, the hi-hats move around the listener, the snare feels closer and more precise, and the bass risers swell up from below to grab your attention.
Trap is a genre that relies on minimal instrumentation, lots of detail in the percussion part, and plenty of room for the vocals to sit on top. In a 360 Reality Audio mix, the clarity of every instrument is enhanced, so you can add lots of ear candy while still hearing every word and syllable of the vocal line.
Hear the difference: Country/Folk
Next up, check out Creekside, an emotive country beat driven by an acoustic guitar. In stereo, the mix is punchy but flat, there’s not a lot of change in the volume dynamics, and we don’t get much of that ‘human’ feel that makes acoustic instruments come alive. By comparison, the 360 Reality Audio mix feels more realistic, delicate, and emotionally engaging.
A well-mixed country or folk song is all about communicating emotion, creating a mood and an atmosphere, and showing off the skilled musicianship of the band members. A 360 Reality Audio mix can offer levels of realism that stereo can’t touch – instruments feel almost as if they’re being played live in the room with you, drawing the listener into the performance, the lyrics, and the song structure, all of which produce a far more satisfying experience for the audience.
Hear the difference: EDM
Finally, let’s listen to Soft Villain. Starting with the 360 Reality Audio version, we get luscious swells from the pads, bright lead synths that cut through beautifully, and a very dynamic spatial image. Each new musical part arrives as a three-dimensional sound, and there is a strong sense of left-to-right movement throughout the track. Once we change over to stereo, that spatial image becomes much narrower, and we lose all that wonderful depth.
In many ways, EDM is the genre that has the most to gain from the shift to spatial audio. Because the sounds are grounded firmly in electronics, there is no need to keep things ‘realistic’ when mixing – this means we are free to take full advantage of 360 Reality Audio’s awesome power to dynamically move sound around the listener.
Taking it further
Now that you’ve heard the difference between a 360 Reality Audio mix and stereo, you can confidently begin using 360 Reality Audio in your own work. No matter what genre or style you like to work in, a spatial approach to music making can open up a whole world of sound for your fans to get lost in.
20 more immersive 360 Reality Audio beats have just dropped, each featuring a minimum of 10 audio objects placed around listeners in a spherical sound field. Explore the new catalogue to create and experience music in a whole new dimension.
About the Author: Clovis McEvoy is an award-winning composer and writer. He is currently an Affiliate Researcher at the University of Greenwich, London, investigating spatial audio and immersive media.
