Here for It All is Mariah Carey’s 16th studio album, released in September 2025, marking her first project in several years.
The album features 11 tracks, including collaborations with Anderson .Paak, Kehlani, Shenseea, and The Clark Sisters.
The singles Type Dangerous and Sugar Sweet provide a balance between upbeat songs and ballads. The album addresses themes such as motherhood, resilience, and personal introspection.
The production highlights Mariah Carey’s voice and benefits from a polished, well-crafted sound, acknowledged by critics.

Another Mariah Carey Album Analyzed:

For this review, you will find 2 versions tested:

• Ed 1: Amazon 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 composed of 11 tracks:

1. Mi
2. Play This Song (feat. Anderson .Paak)
3. Type Dangerous
4. Sugar Sweet (feat. Shenseea & Kehlani)
5. In Your Feelings
6. Nothing Is Impossible
7. Confetti and Champagne
8. I Won’t Allow It
9. My Love
10. Jesus I Do (feat. The Clark Sisters)
11. Here For It All

Summary, scoring and Samples

Ed 1: Amazon Dolby Atmos – 2025

Presentation

This is the Amazon 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 spatialization for Play This Song:

Waveform and Spectrum: DR15

The waveform of the Amazon Dolby Atmos – 2025 shows a very high range confirmed with DR15.

The spectrogram of the Tidal Dolby Atmos track in 7.1.4 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. The green arrow shows the 120Hz filtering of the bass channel (LFE).

The graph below represents the spectrum of the Amazon 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 and it is often used. The white arrow indicates the high frequency limit at 20 kHz due to Dolby Digital Plus encoding.

Synthesis and listening

The Dolby Atmos version delivers a more vibrant sound, providing a more natural rendering. The soundstage remains mostly front-facing, but certain tracks such as “Mi,” “Play This Song,” and “I Won’t Allow It” make greater use of spatialization. The effect is mainly a widening of the frontal stage, with occasional, more pronounced use of spatial effects. The LFE channel is notably well-present, enhancing the impact of low frequencies in multichannel playback.

Rating:

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

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 22 kHz (yellow arrow) with no signal above this frequency (white arrow) due to the 44.1 kHz sampling frequency.

The graph below represents the spectrum of the Tidal MAX – 2025.
The spectrum shows that the signal rises to 22 kHz with no signal above this frequency due to the 44.1 kHz sampling frequency.

Synthesis and listening

The stereo mix, capped at DR5, illustrates the loudness war well: intense in impact but heavily compressed, with little subtlety or space to breathe. In contrast, the Dolby Atmos version provides greater dynamic range, uncovering finer details and richer sonic depth.

Rating:

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

With this new album Here For It All, I feared it would be affected by the loudness war, but I was expecting a DR8, not such a strong dynamic limitation reaching DR5! Fortunately, as is often the case nowadays, it’s the Dolby Atmos version that provides the most dynamic and detailed sound, even though the Dolby Digital Plus encoding doesn’t have the finesse of lossless audio.

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).

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

	Amazon Dolby Atmos – 2025	Tidal MAX – 2025
Global	DR15	DR5
Min	DR12	DR4
Max	DR17	DR6
Mi	DR13	DR5
Play This Song (feat. Anderson .Paak)	DR15	DR6
Type Dangerous	DR17	DR5
Sugar Sweet (feat. Shenseea & Kehlani)	DR16	DR4
In Your Feelings	DR16	DR6
Nothing Is Impossible	DR12	DR5
Confetti and Champagne	DR14	DR5
I Won’t Allow It	DR16	DR6
My Love	DR13	DR5
Jesus I Do (feat. The Clark Sisters)	DR16	DR6
Here For It All	DR13	DR6

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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