“Songs from the Big Chair” is the second studio album by British band Tears for Fears, released on February 25, 1985. This album represents a milestone in the band’s career, helping them to achieve international fame.
Tears for Fears, founded in 1981 by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, was a notable band on the ’80s music scene.
The album includes well-known tracks such as “Shout” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” which left their mark on the decade. Other tracks include “Mothers Talk” and “Head over Heels”.
It was a great commercial success, particularly in the U.S., where it reached number one on the Billboard 200.
For the album’s 40th anniversary, a Dolby Atmos mix was produced by Steven Wilson. This Dolby Atmos version is available for streaming on Tidal, Apple Music and Amazon Music.
A Blu-ray edition of this new Atmos mix is hoped by listeners for a more audiophile experience.
While we await a full review of this album, including versions on vinyl, CD, SACD, cassette, etc., below you’ll find the analysis and samples from the Dolby Atmos version.

Other Tears For Fears albums reviewed:

The album is composed of 8 tracks:

1. Shout
2. The Working Hour
3. Everybody Wants To Rule The World
4. Mothers Talk
5. I Believe
6. Broken
7. Head Over Heels
8. Listen

Summary, scoring and Samples

Ed 1: Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2025

Presentation

This is the Tidal Dolby Atmos presented in Dolby Digital Plus or AC-4 (link).

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

Waveform and Spectrum: DR14

The waveform of the Tidal Atmos version downmixed in 7.1 shows good dynamics, as the graphs below confirm, with a dynamic range of at DR14.

The spectrogram of the Dolby Atmos track downmixed in 7.1 is limited to 20kHz. 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.

The graph below represents the spectrum of the Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2025.
The spectrum of Tidal’s Dolby Atmos version decoded in 7.1 shows similarities to that of the Dolby Atmos Blu-ray version. The LFE channel uses a cutoff frequency of 120 Hz (indicated by the green arrow), although this cutoff is less pronounced than on the Blu-ray version. The white arrow indicates the high-frequency limit at 20 kHz, due to the Dolby Digital Plus encoding. Finally, the yellow arrow shows the high-frequency limit at 24 kHz, attributable to the 48 kHz sampling frequency used for encoding.

Synthesis and listening

Steven Wilson is renowned for his Dolby Atmos remixes, notably of Tears For Fears’ “Songs for a Nervous Planet”, Ultravox’s “Lamen”, and many others to be found on MagicVinylDigital.
With this Dolby Atmos remix of Songs from the Big Chair, Steven Wilson succeeds in sublimating the original work while offering exceptional sonic immersion. Each song benefits from precise, harmonious spatial rendering, making full use of the audio channels for a natural distribution of instruments. The whole creates a sensation of fluid exchange between sound elements, while remaining faithful to the essence of the album. An undeniable success, to be discovered absolutely in multichannel (7.1.4) to rediscover this masterpiece in a new light!
We can only hope for a blu-ray edition via SDE.

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●●●●● (4.5)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●o (4)
• Spatialization: ●●●●●●●●oo (8.4)
• Restitution: ●●●●o (4)

Sample : “Shout” 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 : “Shout” Dolby Atmos (Downmixed 2.0) :

Dynamic Range measurements 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 edition reviewed have obtained the following Dynamic Range (DR) :

	Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2025
Global	DR14
Min	DR12
Max	DR16
Shout	DR14
The Working Hour	DR14
Everybody Wants To Rule The World	DR13
Mothers Talk	DR16
I Believe	DR14
Broken	DR12
Head Over Heels	DR15
Listen	DR13

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.

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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