This summer turns pink with the soundtrack to “Barbie The Album”. Will the quality editions of this album be green (good) or red (bad)? Or maybe pink! The 44-minute soundtrack features 17 tracks by a wide range of artists: Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice with Aqua, Charli XCX, Karol G featuring Aldo Ranks, Sam Smith, Tame Impala, Ryan Gosling, Dominic Fike, Haim, Billie Eilish, The Kid Laroi, Khalid, PinkPantheress, Gayle, Ava Max, Fifty Fifty featuring Kaliii.

This is a blockbuster soundtrack, but for this film there’s a big budget for sound mixing, and a lot of work goes into the soundtrack with many different artists. Music mixed for cinema exploits the high dynamic range allowed by movie theaters. But what about stereo and Dolby Atmos versions for streaming or vinyl?

For this review, you will find 3 versions tested: Neon Pink vinyl, Amazon Music UltraHD and Tidal Dolby Atmos.

Below you will find the description of the different editions, as well as the measurements of each edition in the following chapters.
The synthesis of the review and the samples are available here

The album is composed of 17 tracks:

1. Pink
2. Dance the Night
3. Barbie World
4. Speed Drive
5. Watati
6. Man I Am
7. Journey to the Real World
8. I’m Just Ken
9. Hey Blondie
10. Home
11. What Was I Made For?
12. Forever & Again
13. Silver Platter
14. Angel
15. Butterflies
16. Choose Your Fighter
17. Barbie Dreams*

* Not available on vinyl disc

First we will analyze each edition in detail (technical and qualitative analysis), then we will compare the successive editions with their dynamics and assign a final score, and you will be able to listen some samples.

The streaming versions may evolve over time, those presented here correspond to the version tested at the date of publication, or update of the review.

Review of the editions:

Part 1: Presentation of the editions

Part 2 : Waveform and dynamique comparaison

Parts 3 : Spectrum comparisons

Part 4 : Spectrogram comparaisons>

Part 5 : Spatialization

Part 6 : Summary, scoring and Sample

Part 1: presentation of the editions

Ed 1: Vinyl (neon pink) – 2023

Presentation

It’s hard to escape a neon-pink vinyl record for this film score. The vinyl record contains just 16 tracks (ref: 075688615593).

Ed 2: Amazon UltraHD – 2023

Presentation

The stereo version of Amazon Music is presented in UltraHD in 24 Bits 48 kHz.

Ed 3: Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2023

Presentation

The Tidal Dolby Atmos version is presented in Dolby Digital Plus 768 bits/s) or Dolby AC-4.

Part 2 : Waveform and dynamic comparaisons

Waveform

The waveform represents tracks of this album.

The vinyl waveform below is slightly dynamic, with a variation in dynamics between tracks, as confirmed by the DR measurement with DRs between DR8 and DR11.

The waveform of the Amazon Music digital stereo version clearly shows the zones with an almost constant maximum level (yellow zone), demonstrating the use of a brickwall limiter, as confirmed by the DR7 (down to DR3 for some tracks). The same applies to other streaming services.

The waveform of the Dolby Atmos version, downmixed to stereo, shows a good dynamics, without the extreme use of limiters, unlike the digital stereo version (Ed2).

For this album, here’s a new measurement, the histogram, which complements the waveform measurements. The histogram shows the distribution of levels. The result is an interesting curve.

The histogram on the right corresponds to the level distribution for the vinyl version, with a bell-shaped distribution. The histogram is similar to the Dolby Atmos version (downmixed to stereo), with just a level shift. The histogram on the left shows the level distribution for the Amazon stereo version. There are small peaks with a stop at the 0 dB level, due to the use of brickwall limiters (yellow arrow). The impact is smoothed across all tracks.

Dynamic

Dynamic represents the ability to reproduce a wide range of sounds from the softest to the loudest. The target is to compare the dynamics of the music and not of the media (CD, digital files or vinyl).

For our 3 editions reviewed have obtained the following Dynamic Range (DR) :

	Vinyl (neon pink) – 2023	Amazon UltraHD – 2023	Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2023
Global	DR10	DR6	DR14
Min	DR8	DR5	DR12
Max	DR11	DR8	DR19
Pink	DR11	DR5	DR14
Dance the Night	DR10	DR5	DR15
Barbie World	DR8	DR6	DR13
Speed Drive	DR9	DR5	DR17
Watati	DR10	DR6	DR13
Man I Am	DR11	DR7	DR19
Journey to the Real World	DR9	DR5	DR16
I’m Just Ken	DR9	DR8	DR12
Hey Blondie	DR11	DR5	DR14
Home	DR10	DR5	DR13
What Was I Made For?	DR9	DR6	DR14
Forever & Again	DR10	DR6	DR16
Silver Platter	DR10	DR7	DR14
Angel	DR9	DR6	DR13
Butterflies	DR9	DR8	DR13
Choose Your Fighter	DR9	DR5	DR13
Barbie Dreams*		DR5	DR12

The streaming stereo version (Amazon Music) has a reduced DR6 dynamic range (between DR3 and DR8). You’ll need to turn to vinyl or the Dolby Atmos version for a higher DR, up to DR14 for the Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 version.

As a reminder, the scale goes from 0 to more 20, but the dynamics are considered good from 12, quite good between 10 and 11, and deteriorate below 10.

Part 3 : spectrum comparisons

Spectrum

The Spectrum allows to check the tonal balance of the music (balance between treble, medium and bass sounds) and to detect process that may have been carried out during the recording, the mixing, mastering or manufacturing phases. It is also possible to detect frequency interference issues.

The graph below compares the vinyl spectrum (white curve) with the spectrum of the stereo streaming version (blue curve). The curves overlap perfectly up to 8 kHz, and beyond this frequency (yellow zone), there’s a gradual increase for vinyl, reaching +5 dB at 20 kHz. The yellow arrow indicates the maximum frequency of the stereo streaming version at 24 kHz, due to the 48 kHz sampling frequency.

The spectrum of the Dolby Atmos Tidal version decoded in 7.1 shows that the front left and right channels are the most used, with a higher level than the other channels throughout the spectrum. The bass channel is filtered at 120 Hz, as indicated by the green arrow. The yellow arrow indicates the limit of high frequencies at 20 kHz due to Dolby Digital Plus encoding.

Part 4 : Spectrogram comparaisons

Spectrogram

Spectrogram is another representation of frequency versus time of a track. For each channel (right and left), horizontal axis represents time, and the vertical axis represents frequency. The amplitude is represented by the intensity (brightness) of the color of each point in the image.

The vinyl spectrogram below shows that the frequencies of the audio signal rise above 20 kHz (yellow arrow). The signal above 20kHz (white arrow) is due to distortion caused by the vinyl’s playback principle. There is no signal in the digital master for these frequencies (above 24 kHz).

The spectrogram of the Amazon stereo track is limited to 24kHz (yellow arrow) with no signal above (white arrow). This limitation is due to the 48kHz sampling frequency used for the UltraHD format of this album.

The spectrogram of the Dolby Atmos track downmixed in stereo is limited to 20kHz (yellow arrow) with no signal above (white arrow). This limitation is due to Dolby Digital Plus encoding, which is a lossy encoder that limits bandwidth to optimize data size for a bit rate of 768 kbits/s.

Part 5 : Spatialization

Spatialization allows you to define the sound distribution of the music on all the channels. The spatialization indicator and the description of the graph are described here.

Spatialization is available for Tidal Dolby Atmos .

Below the spatialization for the 17 tracks of Tidal Dolby Atmos version. Click on the images to zoom in.

Part 6 : Summary, scoring and Samples

Ed 1: Vinyl (neon pink) – 2023

The vinyl version follows the current trend for colored vinyl, with this Barbie film strip in pink. The pressing is correct. Listening to this version, the sound is more open, detailed and precise than Amazon’s digital stereo version, with a better tonal balance and more natural vocals.

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●●●oo (3)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●● (5)
• Surface noise: ●●●●o (4)
• Restitution: ●●●●o (3.5)

Sample : ”Forever & Again” 24 bits 88.2 kHz:

Ed 2: Amazon UltraHD – 2023

No surprises with this digital stereo version which, despite its 24-bit presentation, is compressed in DR6 and down to DR3. In comparison, the dolby Atmos version brings more dynamics and detail. Compared to the vinyl, the vinyl version is more pleasant to listen to, with a more open and detailed rendering.

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●oooo (1)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●o (4)
• Restitution: ●●ooo (2.5)

Sample : ”Forever & Again” 24 bits 48 kHz:

Ed 3: Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2023

The Dolby Atmos version is more dynamic, with a wider front soundstage than the stereo version, and much more spatial on many tracks, such as Charli XCX – Speed Drive and Ava Max – Choose Your Fighter . The Atmos mix varies greatly from track to track, but always delivers better dynamics and precision than the stereo version.

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●●●●o (4)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●o (4)
• Spatialization: ●●●●●ooooo (5.1)
• Restitution: ●●●●o (4)

Sample : ”Forever & Again” 7.1 :

The sample is in 7.1 wav format, if you can not play the sample in your navigator, you can save it, right button menu and “Save Audio As…” and play it with an external player.

To keep things colourful, the digital stereo version of the pink album turns red, with significant compression (up to DR3 or DR4 for certain tracks). Vinyl, on the other hand, offers a more pleasant and detailed sound in digital listening. It’s the Dolby Atmos version that turns green, with its beautiful dynamics and spatialization.

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Detail of the ratings :

• Dynamic :
  1. Significant dynamic compression, DR less than 7
  2. Compression of the present dynamics, DR between 7 and 9.
  3. Correct piece DR >=10
  4. No dynamic compression (DR >12), dynamic rendering
  5. No dynamic compression, high DR and very dynamic sound rendering
• Spectrum :
  1. Spectrum cut and less than 15 khz
  2. Spectrum cut at 15 khz
  3. Spectrum not conforming to the original and cut (not HD) or original but limited bandwidth (but less than 20 kHz)
  4. Spectrum conforming to the original (but not HD)
  5. Spectrum conforming to the original with HD resolution (higher than 24kHz)
• Surface noise (only for vinyl):
  1. Continuous audible noise
  2. Audible surface noise except on passages with a high level of noise
  3. Reduced surface noise, barely audible on low level crossings
  4. Low surface noise, very good quality
  5. Very low surface noise, no defects, almost inaudible on the quiet passages (exceptional disc)
• Spatialization :
  • Between 0 and 5 for 5.1 or 7.1 channels configuration
  • Between 0 and 10 for Atmos configuration (7.1.4)
  • For more information on spatialization, you can read the article describing this parameter here.
• Restitution :
  1. Low quality of the restitution mixing dynamics, clarity, separation of voices and instruments.
  2. Average quality of the restitution mixing dynamics, clarity, separation of voices and instruments.
  3. Quality of the restitution mixing dynamics, clarity, separation of voices and instruments. Good record.
  4. High quality of the restitution mixing dynamics, clarity, separation of voices and instruments. Very high level disc.
  5. Maximum quality of the restitution mixing dynamics, clarity, separation of voices and instruments. Exceptional disc.

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