“I know, like, Apple Music is offering that, so you don’t have to have anything but a pair of headphones in order to listen to most music. And it’s even possible on some computers. I know, like, Apple MacBook Pros, if you just play through the speakers in the computer, it’s astonishing. It gives it, it’s got DSP built in that, just, basically, it sounds like the mix is all around you. So, yeah. So that, wow, and none of those things are possible with, um, you know, the classic, you know, surround formats, which is one of the reasons I think that Atmos is going to probably, um, you know, catch on a lot more, more readily than those did.” -- Jeff Bohnhoff
This episode’s guest is a musician, audio engineer, and producer. He’s been performing and recording with Maya, his musical partner and wife, for over forty years, and he’s produced more than twenty albums for various artists. His name is Jeff Bohnhoff, and this week’s discussion about the power of sound and music, the changes in recording from analog to digital, and his thoughts about the future of audio with the rise of Dolby Atmos, make for a fascinating discussion. If you’re an audio engineer or just interested in where audio tech is taking us, this discussion’s bound to be inspirational!
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(0:00:00) – Early Memories of Musical Influence
The conversation starts off with a look back at Jeff’s memories of sound, from the toy record player of his childhood to the rock albums of his teenage years. “I remember just kind of lying there,” he says, “and wishing to myself, ‘Man, I wish I could create something like that.’" He tells us about receiving his first guitar, and how, despite a rough start, it led to bigger and better things. “I wasn’t any good,” he recalls, “I was terrible. But I was stubborn, and then I saved up some money and bought a better guitar, and it just kind of went from there.”
(0:04:41) – A Musician’s Early Career
We talk about his first band and the chance meeting that led to both his second band and meeting his future wife, Maya. “We were doing a lot of cover songs,” Jeff tells us. “We were playing like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rush, stuff like that.” He explains how MIDI controllers had just begun to shake up the music industry around that same time, and how they sparked his fascination with early electronic music and digital audio’s ability to create true one-person performances. “I was doing electronic music,” he says, “but I wasn’t really doing what you would think of as electronic music. I was trying to recreate the sound of our band, or ex-band, in such a way that just the two of us could play.”
(0:12:39) - Evolution of Music Technology
Jeff talks about those experiments with MIDI and digital audio in the 1970s and the gap between what he hoped for and what the technology of the time could manage. “We started performing as a duo,” he says, “and our setup grew to be where I, you know, we had racks and racks of synthesizers, and we even had a MIDI-controlled light show.” We discuss how far audio technology’s evolved since those early days and how much there is to learn about both what it can do and where it might lead when it comes to music. “I try to always be aware of the danger of that,” he says, “and try to approach everything from the point of view of I’m still learning and there’s a lot, a lot I don’t know.”
(0:28:48) - Advantages of Atmos for Headphone Users
Our discussion turns to Dolby Atmos, and its potential to supplant traditional Surround-sound setups with its flexibility and precision. “With Atmos,” Jeff explains, “it’s object-based. And so you set it, you know, when you set up a studio, you tell your software what the layout of your studio is, so it knows how to route things.” We also talk about the push in the record industry to remake back catalogs in Dolby Atmos, and how much more accessible it is to listeners at home. “The other thing that’s possible with Atmos,” he tells us, “is that it can use binaural audio, so you can listen to an Atmos mix through your headphones. And that opens it up to tons of people.”
Episode Summary
How Jeff’s early experiences with sound inspired him to become a musician.
Jeff’s experiments with electronic music in the early days of MIDI
The evolution of audio technology, from analog tapes to studio software.
How Dolby Atmos and binaural audio are reshaping the industry.
Tune in for the second half of our conversation as Jeff talks about his own experiences recording in Dolby Atmos, his work with other artists in genres as diverse as jazz, prog rock, and filk, and how one particular post-pandemic collaboration aims to inspire and bring people closer together.
