Man’s Best Friend is Sabrina Carpenter’s sixth studio album. This album is a pop record that explores themes of love and heartbreak with a tone that is at times light and ironic. Supported by singles such as Manchild and Tears, it achieved commercial success while generating mixed critical reactions: some praised its accessibility and humor, while others felt it was too conventional or noted the presence of explicitly themed passages.
The original cover, regarded by some as provocative, sparked a debate about female representation; Sabrina Carpenter later released more restrained and humorous alternative versions, which are shown above alongside the original artwork.

For this review, you will find 2 versions tested:

• Ed 1: Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2025
• Ed 2: Tidal MAX – 2025

Below you will find the description of the different editions, as well as the measurements of each edition in the following chapters.

The album is also available on vinyl with the original cover or alternative covers (not reviewed).

The album is composed of 12 tracks:

1. Manchild
2. Tears
3. My Man on Willpower
4. Sugar Talking
5. We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night
6. Nobody’s Son
7. Never Getting Laid
8. When Did You Get Hot
9. Go Go Juice
10. Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry
11. House Tour
12. Goodbye

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.

Below the video of spatialization :

https://videopress.com/v/buOWhpdy?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Waveform and Spectrum: DR15

The waveform of the Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2025 shows a high range confirmed with DR14.

The spectrogram of the Tidal Dolby Atmos track in 7.14 is limited to 20 kHz (yellow arrow), with no signal beyond that point (white arrow). This limitation comes from Dolby Digital Plus compression, which uses lossy encoding to reduce bandwidth and fit a 768 kbps bitrate. The 120 Hz low-pass filter on the LFE channel is marked by the green arrow.

The graph below represents the spectrum of the Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2025. The spectrum of the Dolby Atmos version of Tidal in 7.1 shows that the front channels are more used compared to the other channels, followed by the side and rear channels. The LFE channel ilimited to 120 Hz. The white arrow indicates the high frequency limit at 20 kHz due to Dolby Digital Plus encoding.

Synthesis and listening

The Dolby Atmos mix varies from track to track. In most cases, it remains primarily frontal and lateral, but three songs stand out with a more pronounced spatialization: Tears, Sugar Talking, and Never Getting Laid. The center vocal channel and the LFE channel are used only sparingly.
This results in two distinct approaches:.
– a broadened soundstage extending about 180° across the front, while maintaining excellent sound rendering.
– a more immersive rendering that fully exploits the space, especially on Never Getting Laid or Tears, where all channels are engaged.
It sounds like the mixing was done by two different sound engineers.
Beyond the spatial aspect, the Atmos version also offers significantly greater dynamics compared to the Tidal MAX stereo version, the latter being heavily compressed (DR5).

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●●●●o (4.5)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●o (4)
• Spatialization: ●●●●●●oooo (6.0)
• Restitution: ●●●oo (3.5)

Sample : Tears 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 : Tears Dolby Atmos (Downmixed 2.0) :

Ed 2: Tidal MAX – 2025

Presentation

This is the Tidal Max version presented in 24 bits 48 kHz (link).

Waveform and Spectrum: DR5

The waveform of the Tidal MAX – 2025 version shows a extremely low dynamic range confirmed with DR5.

The spectrogram shows that the signal rises to 24 kHz (yellow arrow) with no signal above this frequency (white arrow) due to the 48 kHz sampling frequency.

The graph below represents the spectrum of the Tidal MAX – 2025. The spectrum shows that the signal rises to 24 kHz with no signal above this frequency due to the 48 kHz sampling frequency.

Synthesis and listening

The stereo version, limited to a DR5, is a clear example of the loudness war: powerful but compressed, lacking nuance and breathing room. The Dolby Atmos version, on the other hand, offers a wider dynamic range and reveals more detail and sonic depth.

Rating:

• Dynamic: ●oooo (1)
• Bandwidth: ●●●●o (4)
• Restitution: ●●ooo (2)

Sample : Tears 24 bits 48 kHz:

The stereo version, with its DR5, is fully immersed in the loudness war: it delivers a powerful sound, but at the expense of dynamics and finesse.
It is necessary to turn to the Dolby Atmos version, which benefits from better dynamics and also offers a more nuanced spatial approach. Sometimes limited to an expanded front stage, sometimes fully immersive, it manages to reveal details and a sonic depth that are absent from the compressed stereo.

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).

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

	Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2025	Tidal MAX – 2025
Global	DR15	DR5
Min	DR11	DR4
Max	DR20	DR6
Manchild	DR17	DR5
Tears	DR14	DR5
My Man on Willpower	DR13	DR4
Sugar Talking	DR14	DR6
We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night	DR13	DR5
Nobody’s Son	DR20	DR5
Never Getting Laid	DR11	DR5
When Did You Get Hot	DR16	DR5
Go Go Juice	DR15	DR4
Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry	DR13	DR5
House Tour	DR16	DR5
Goodbye	DR14	DR5

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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