Atmos Only Knows

Producer Giles Martin reveals how he focused on getting a “real” feel when he mixed The Beach Boys’ benchmark 1966 album, Pet Sounds, in Atmos.

- MIKE METTER

After scoring big last year with his stellar Atmos mix of The Beatles’ seminal August 1966 album Revolver, producer Giles Martin was more recently tasked with giving the Atmos treatment to The Beach Boys’ benchmark May 1966 release, Pet Sounds, which is now available for streaming via Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, and Tidal.

In a recent Zoom interview, Martin and I discuss what his approach to dealing with all those infamous Beach Boys vocal stacks entailed, how he guaranteed his Pet Sounds Atmos mix stayed true to the music’s “real” intent, and how he made sure “God Only Knows” comes across as being nothing short of heavenly in its Atmos incarnation. (A longer version of this interview appears in my monthly Spatial Audio File column on the S&V site.)

Mike Mettler: Tell me how you approached working with the Pet Sounds vocal stacks in Atmos.

Giles Martin: The vocals, obviously, are so important because it’s The Beach Boys. In a way, that’s the easiest thing because they are The Beach Boys, and they’re so good. It’s much easier to mix things that already sound that good.

And this is such an unsexy word, but it’s the precision. I think we get excited by humans doing inhuman things, and The Beach Boys did things that no one else has really been able to do since, in that way. There are so many different facets to it because it’s