English electronic music producer Matt Darey has expressed his enthusiasm for the widespread adoption of mixing music for Dolby Atmos, after recording, mixing and mastering his latest album, Wolf, in the immersive audio format.

The release is slated to be the first album written and produced specifically for 7.1.4. 3D Surround Sound in Dolby Atmos.

“The technology is there, it just needs the content,” said Darey during a recent interview with AMI. “Even though I think the most exciting area will be new music in terms of creativity, artist’s back catalogues will drive and stimulate the market because the technology has a higher barrier to entry financially, and it’s not something that your average kid will do.”

Darey, known for his work in the Euphoria trance series and his remixes of Agnelli & Nelson’s El Niño, used Dolby Studios’ facilities over of course of three months to mix Wolf in a 7.1.4 configuration, and has released it for free as a digital download so that listeners can try out and experiment with the format themselves.

“Once you’ve nailed the general principles of mixing in Atmos, mixing the back catalogue will be more subtle, so once this happens I think the flood gates will open,” he continued. “I think that just before Apple and Amazon etc. make their platforms Atmos-ready; this will be the time when it will really start to grow.

“For an artist I think it’s almost like future-proofing your music, so there is an incentive to get it out there and this will stimulate the market further.”

So while Darey is confident that artists using Dolby Atmos to master their back catalogues will drive the market more than new music, “which is more specialist and niche in nature – usually before it crosses over – this will jump on the back of that and probably create more innovative uses of 3D technology,” he added.

Look out for the full interview with Matt Darey online soon.