The soundtrack to the film Bob Marley: One Love is now available and features 17 of the legendary artist’s greatest hits from the history of reggae music, all of which are included in director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s biopic. The film traces the life and work of Bob Marley, his commitment to peace and justice, and his cultural and spiritual legacy.
The music on the Bob Marley: One Love soundtrack is taken from several of his albums, including Catch a Fire (1973), Burnin’ (1973), Rastaman Vibration (1976), Exodus (1977), Kaya (1978) and Uprising (1980).
Many of these tracks are available on the 1984 Legend compilation.
The Bob Marley: One Love soundtrack is also available in Dolby Atmos, mixed by Nick Rives.

For this review, you will find 2 versions tested: Tidal MAX Flac 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. Roots, Rock, Reggae
2. No More Trouble
3. War/No More Trouble (From “Bob Marley: One Love” Soundtrack)
4. So Jah S’eh (From “Bob Marley: One Love” Soundtrack)
5. Natural Mystic
6. Turn Your Lights Down Low
7. Exodus
8. Jamming
9. Concrete Jungle
10. No Woman, No Cry (Live At The Rainbow Theatre, London / 4th June 1977 / Remastered 2020)
11. Three Little Birds
12. Redemption Song
13. One Love / People Get Ready
14. Is This Love
15. Get Up, Stand Up
16. I Shot The Sheriff
17. Rastaman Chant

Summary, scoring and Samples

Ed 1: Tidal MAX Flac (Deluxe) – 2024

Presentation

The stereo version of Tidal Music is presented in 24 bits 96 kHz.

Waveform and Spectrum: DR7

The waveform of the Tidal Max version is limited in dynamic range, as confirmed by the Dynamic range DR7.

The spectrogram is not limited to 22 kHz (yellow arrow) with a lot of musical signal above this frequency (white arrow). This is due to the 96 kHz sampling frequency used.

Synthesis and listening

The stereo version makes perfect use of the high-resolution 24-bit 96 kHz format, with no limitation beyond 22 kHz as in the original recording. But the dynamic compression, which sounds pleasant, only accentuates all the instruments and vocals, losing some of the original balance found on the “Legend – The Best Of Bob Marley And The Wailers” album.
On “One Love / People Get Ready”, we find more naturalness and realism on this 1984 compilation, with a DR14 dynamic compared to the DR7 version of this album. You can listen to the extracts below to hear the difference between these versions.

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●●ooo (2)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●● (5)
• Restitution: ●●ooo (2.5)

Sample : ”One Love / People Get Ready” 24 bits 96 kHz:

Sample : ”One Love / People Get Ready” from album “Legend – The Best Of Bob Marley And The Wailers”24 bits 96 kHz:

Ed 2: Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2024

Presentation

This is the Tidal Dolby Atmos presented in Dolby Digital Plus (768 kbits/s) or AC-4.

Below the spatialization for all tracks. Click on the images to zoom in.

Waveform and Spectrum: DR15

The waveforms of the Dolby Atmos downmixed in 2.0 track show good dynamics, as confirmed by the graph below, with dynamic range measurements at DR14.

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.

Synthesis and listening

A great deal of work has been done to expand the spatialization of the front stage on the side speakers with dynamique, but also top front on all the tracks, as on “No More Trouble” and “War-No More Trouble”, for example.
“Get Up, Stand Up”: beautiful spatialization that makes perfect use of the side channels for instrument placement.
“Turn Your Lights Down Low”, “Jamming”, “People Get Ready”, “Is This Love”: here we find a spatialization that distributes the instruments and backing vocals over all the channels, with the backing vocals also present in the top speakers for “Turn Your Lights Down Low”.
“Redemption Song”: this is one of the exceptions for this song, which remains predominantly fontal with some widening.
But the Dolby Atmos version can’t compete in terms of finesse with the stereo Lossless version, but more consistent with the original.

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●●●●● (5)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●o (4)
• Spatialization: ●●●●●●oooo (6.3)
• Restitution: ●●●oo (3.5)

Sample : ”One Love / People Get Ready” 7.1 Dolby Atmos (Downmixed in 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.

Sample : ”One Love / People Get Ready” Dolby Atmos (Downmixed in 2.0) :

The Dolby Atmos version is a true success, immersing us in the music of the film “One Love”. The stereo version could have been at the same level if the dynamic compression hadn’t been so present, preventing the original rendering of the songs as on the “Legend” compilation released in 1984.

Dynamic Range measurements and spectra are shown below.

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Measurements

Dynamic Range comparaisons

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).

The waveforms below represent the song “One Love / People Get Ready” for the two versions tested and the version of the album (Legend – The Best Of Bob Marley And The Wailers from Amazon Music) with the same integrated loudness level of -20 LUFS.

For our 2 editions reviewed have obtained the following Dynamic Range (DR) :

	Tidal MAX Flac (Deluxe) – 2024	Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2024
Global	DR7	DR15
Min	DR7	DR13
Max	DR9	DR18
Roots, Rock, Reggae	DR7	DR15
No More Trouble	DR8	DR18
War/No More Trouble (From “Bob Marley: One Love” Soundtrack)	DR7	DR14
So Jah S’eh (From “Bob Marley: One Love” Soundtrack)	DR7	DR14
Natural Mystic	DR7	DR15
Turn Your Lights Down Low	DR7	DR16
Exodus	DR7	DR18
Jamming	DR7	DR16
Concrete Jungle	DR7	DR16
No Woman, No Cry (Live At The Rainbow Theatre, London / 4th June 1977 / Remastered 2020)	DR7	DR15
Three Little Birds	DR7	DR16
Redemption Song	DR9	DR15
One Love / People Get Ready	DR7	DR16
Is This Love	DR7	DR14
Get Up, Stand Up	DR7	DR13
I Shot The Sheriff	DR7	DR13
Rastaman Chant	DR7	DR15

The Dolby Atmos version (DR13) is the most dynamic, followed by the vinyl and Stereo versions.

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.

Spectrum comparisons

The graph below represents the spectrum of the Tidal MAX Flac (Deluxe) – 2024.
The bandwidth rises above 20 kHz and gradually attenuates towards 30 kHz. The high resolution (96 kHz) is perfectly exploited for this album.

The graph below represents the spectrum of the Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2024 downmixed in 7.1.
The yellow arrow indicates the high-frequency limit at 20 kHz due to Dolby Digital Plus encoding. The white arrow indicates the high-frequency limit at 24 kHz due to encoding at the 48 kHz sampling frequency used, confirming that it is the Dolby Digital Plus encoding algorithm that cuts frequencies at 20 kHz to reduce data size in order to maintain the bit rate of 768 kbits/s.The green arrow shows that the bass channel (LFE) is filtered at 120 Hz.

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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