It’s impossible to hear your favorite song for the first time again. But for ARMY, the loyal and dedicated fans of K-pop supergroup BTS, it is possible to hear some of the group’s biggest hits in a new way thanks to Apple Music.
The streaming platform announced Friday that two of the group’s quintessential album series — The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, released in 2015 and 2016, and Love Yourself, released in 2017 — are now available on the platform in spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. The series is iconic in the BTS’ discography sonically, while also serving as the beginning point for the K-pop group’s historic rise to international acclaim.
With Apple’s spatial audio technology, BTS fans can experience the six albums that make up the series in an immersive way. Imagine your favorite song — let’s say it’s BTS’ “Young Forever” — is a box. Each sonic component of the song is an object placed within that box in a specific location at a specific time; that’s spatial audio. With leading vocals, backing vocals and different instruments and sounds having their own place, each element is able to shine through on its own.
In “Young Forever,” the song’s iconic gang vocals ending is elevated to a new level by the clear distinction of the many layers of vocals. Meanwhile, BTS’ popular hype song, “Burning Up (Fire),” takes a more creative approach to spatial audio, immersing you in the song as if it’s all moving around you.
It’s hard to overstate how much spatial audio can transform a song — many feel brand new while still remaining the song fans love. In the case of BTS, spatial audio also allows for each member’s voice — whether he’s providing leading or backing vocals — to stand out throughout the songs. For hardcore ARMY, spatial audio is a great way to discover new nuances in songs that might seem extremely familiar by now.
“This Dolby Atmos mix is characterized by how it delicately complements the spatial expansion of the sound while maintaining the stereo image and balance of the original song as much as possible,” Hybe studio engineer Yang Ga said in a statement. “While increasing the focus on the lead vocals, we designed each vocal layer to be more clearly distinguished [from each other] by rendering the details of background vocals and ad-lib vocals with greater definition.”
The studio engineer added, “Fans can experience new sound layers and depths even in familiar songs. And if you pay attention to the separation of the vocals, the sense of distance between instruments and the three-dimensional expression of space, you can feel a different emotional contour from the original song. While maintaining the stereo balance and image as it is, the sound has expanded even deeper and wider. The lead vocals are clearer, and the background and ad-lib vocals come to life in three dimensions and convey new emotional contours.”