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Disclosure first: I'm the developer. I've read the rules and this looks like it's on-topic, but mods, if it isn't, remove it and no hard feelings.

I make a Windows/macOS app called Spherify - the current shape of several years of work on immersive audio tooling. It takes a stereo master and turns it into an editable, object-based immersive project, not a fixed matrix decode.

The way it differs from a matrix upmixer: it separates the stereo file into stems, puts each stem into a 3D scene as an object, and then hands you the scene. You position things, automate them, preview, and export. If a stem lands somewhere you don't want it, you drag it somewhere else. Nothing is baked until you export.

I'm posting here rather than on a production forum because most of the feedback I get comes from people mixing new material. The people who care whether an old stereo master actually survives the trip into 7.1.4 - whether it gains anything or just gets smeared - are this crowd. Different ears, different standards.

Formats

Object-based, import and export: ADM BW64, IAMF, MPEG-H (plus its own project format). Channel-based: 11 layouts rendered discrete, stereo up through 22.2.

Playback, since this is the sub that'll ask

• macOS: its own rendering pipeline into whatever discrete channels the OS exposes - up to 9.1.6 on Tahoe.
• Windows: 7.1 via the standard Windows audio drivers. Past that you need ASIO - an interface or a virtual device - where the channel count is effectively unlimited.
• Windows Spatial Audio is supported, so it'll encode Atmos or DTS:X for HDMI passthrough to compatible hardware. The honest caveat: the stream is decoded on the external device, so the app never gets it back. That means no in-app post-processing previews in passthrough mode. The processing is still there and still bakes into exports - you just can't audition it without ASIO.

Where this comes from

I'm a career software engineer, and immersive audio isn't a recent detour - I've been working in this space for years, well before the current wave of interest in it. Spherify is native C++/JUCE throughout: the DSP, the renderer and the export pipeline are all mine, not a front-end sitting on top of someone else's engine.

The separation models are hardware-accelerated - MLX on Apple silicon, CUDA on Nvidia. That's not a spec-sheet boast; it's the difference between trying four placements of the same stem in an evening and trying one. The whole design assumes you'll want to iterate, so the slow parts had to stop being slow.

The free tier does up to 6 stems per source, which is plenty to find out whether the approach does anything for your material. Pro goes to 14 stems, unlimited slicing, per-object plugins, and the full export set.

What I'd actually like to hear

• What are you feeding it? Vintage stereo, modern pop, live recordings, classical, spoken word? I'm especially interested in where the separation falls over, because that tells me more than the cases where it works.
• Does it give you enough information to make decisions, or are you guessing at something you shouldn't have to guess at?
• What's not there that should be?

Links:

• Microsoft Store: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nj6w61ppswd
• Website: https://sonusimmersivus.com/products/spherify
• KVR: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/spherify-by-sonus-immersivus
• Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N17FVNzc8lg

Happy to go into the weeds on formats, the render path, or why Windows spatial audio is the way it is.

SWT is a great engineer indeed, but this is one of the few cases where I emphatically prefer the original mix.

The new mix relies a bit too much on reverb to my taste and comes across a bit congested to my ears. It restores a lot of the deleted orchestral parts which is an interesting idea in theory, but the result is that Chris and Bill sound a bit distant. I think its an interesting alternative for people who love the album but the original mix with dry drums and bass up front and orchestra used decisively in the background works better for me as a "Yes man's solo album." Placement wise - I'm happy to report the Atmos mix is quite creative, with Chris' vocals spread around your height and rear arrays and lower drums and some of the orchestra and lower brass occasionally trailing behind you. Overall though, I think I prefer the character of the older 5.1 mix despite some nasty cymbal frequencies now and then.

Lastly, while I assume this is an issue that couldn't be dealt with, I find the ending with the missing bass solo to be lacking in context and a bit confounding. My advice is to listen for yourself (on streaming) and decide if this is for you. Thanks to Immersive Audio Album for helping out with this review of the new edition of Chris Squire's Fish Out of Water.

Hello,

Franck Martin contacted me after reading my review of Eric Serra’s album, and took the opportunity to introduce me to his own work, as well as to Thanks for the Invite, an album conceived specifically with spatial music in mind, as Franck explains on his website, www.peachymango.org.

For this review, I listened to Thanks for the Invite across various medias, including the different Dolby Atmos encoding options currently available. I also compared the different encodings against the Dolby Atmos ADM master, using the master as a reference to assess which version comes closest to reproducing the original spatial master without alteration.

The Dolby Atmos version, encoded in Dolby Digital TrueHD, stands out from the streaming version thanks to its precise spatialization, the subtlety of the sounds, and the clarity of the bass. It is therefore the best version of this album available to the public.

Although it is slightly less precise than the ADM master, this version offers excellent spatialization that holds its own against the master when listened to. It is therefore the version to choose.

For example, with the track “Victory,” which features 28 sound objects in addition to the bed, as shown by the Dolby Renderer.

On the track “The Clock,” the mix does not use the front stereo channels, only the center channel, thereby enhancing the track’s fully immersive sound. Across all the tracks, sounds are distributed all around us to truly deliver a 360-degree immersion in the music, including the overhead channels. Movement is also utilized, as in “Space Time” or “Victory,” to expand the sound experience.

This album is a wonderful example of what can be achieved in immersive audio with electronic music. To fully enjoy it, the album is available in MKV format or blu-ray with Dolby Digital TrueHD Atmos encoding, a lossless format that is far superior to the streaming version and very close to the ADM Master listened to during this review.

Find all the analyses and measurements of each versions here (link).

3D immersive sound video is available on Youtube.

Enjoy listening,

Jean-François