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Prince’s Purple Rain mixed in Dolby Atmos

Streaming from today

By Paul Sinclair

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42

Prince’s classic Purple Rain album, from 1984, has been mixed in Dolby Atmos and is available to stream from today, on compatible streaming platforms.

The new Atmos mix of Purple Rain has been created from the original multi-track master tapes by Chris James (who did Diamonds and Pearls last year).

Here’s a quote from Paisley Park Enterprises: “As we begin what will be a year-long celebration of the 40th anniversary of Purple Rain, we are thrilled to present Prince’s masterpiece in ATMOS, providing an immersive, surround auditory experience of Prince’s legendary album. This highly crafted release will present Prince’s iconic work with more space and depth while preserving the beautiful songs that have shaped music and popular culture, and touched the lives of countless fans around the world”.

The good news is a Blu-ray Audio has been confirmed, “to be released later in 2024”. Obviously, we’ll make that available via the SDE shop so ensure you’re signed up to the SDE Newsletter mailing list (see below) or are an SDE Member to be one of the first to hear about this physical release!

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42 Comments

42 thoughts on “Prince’s Purple Rain mixed in Dolby Atmos”

  4. Awesome news from Rhino on the future Blu-ray release, for those of us in North America we’ll be able to pick this up without breaking the bank like we do with exclusives from the UK. Hopefully the vinyl will receive a new all analogue mastering by BG like Diamonds and Pearls did.

  5. Clear and purple splatter vinyl available to pre order from the prince store.
    Is there a chance we’ll get a vinyl box set this year?

  7. On this day 40 years ago Duran Duran got their 1st number 1 on the billboard charts.the reflex which I always thought was one of there poorer singles,the public thought different.

    1. I think the reflex mainly became a success because of its intro which seemed cutting edge at the time. Otherwise it was an average album track. It has some ridculous lyrics which make it slightly more fun.

      1. I don’t think there’s any alternate universe in which “The Reflex” gets to #1 without the Nile Rodgers remix. “Time After Time” spends an extra week at the top, and “Dancing in the Dark” gets the #1 that “The Reflex” and (to bring this thread back on topic) “When Doves Cry” denied it and that has always eluded Springsteen.

  8. Like most fans, I already have 2 copies of Purple Rain (80s, 2017 set) and will probably skip any Super Deluxe box unless they find several more discs worth of Vault tracks from that era. But I would buy a Purple Rain re-imagined/remixed/extended by John Morales (PR The M+M Mixes!) or even a Purple Rain “Orchestrated” with the LSO/RPO (“Hooked on Prince Classics” ;-) )

  9. Not impressed with the mix at all. If I win powerball, I’ll buy all the masters, hire Bernie Grundman, Steve Wilson, and a few others who I respect. There will be remasters, and a few new mixes. With Purple Rain, I’d love to increase the drums and bass in several songs, especially Darling Nikki. As much as I love the Foo Fighters, Dave’s wailing on his cover of Nikki is more comedy than natural. But Dave got the drum sound down pat with Taylor Hawkins really getting the most out of his talent. Of course in this pipe dream, I’d make sure all the music got put out with the original mixes, and not the “Frankenstein” mixes of the Originals album, where there was more cut and paste than most casual non-hardcore fans will ever know. More than 8 years after his passing…no remasters for For You, Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, Around The World In A Day, Parade, Lovesexy, Batman, Graffiti Bridge, or the Symbol album. This is a disgrace. And Purple Rain’s anniversary is here, and so far this B- Atmos mix is about all there is from this version of the imaginary “Estate.” If you listen to any of Prince’s family members talk, not one has even mentioned a song title of anything other than a huge hit. They don’t know his music, and the lawyers and record companies argue and fight, and pretty soon, nobody will be alive that would care to buy stuff. Yes, there were some great releases, but considering not even 10% of his unreleased material has been released, it’s only a little better than the Michael Jackson and George Michael “Estates.”

    1. What needs to happen – and clearly won’t ever happen – is a complete reset, go back to basics, release annual SDEs of his albums chronologically, put Prince-related Paisley Park albums back in print, and launch a series of concert album releases. Make them of uniform format so they all look like they belong together, like they form a definitive collection of his work.

  10. Thanks for highlighting this Paul. Sitting in a hospital in Dubai with a bad case of Dengue, but feeling well enough to fire this up on Apple Music on my AirPod max.

    Was very interested to hear this because to my mind the original When Doves Cry was the best Spatial Audio mix on the service hands down. So I was interested to hear this.

    It’s a mixed bag.

    It starts off really well, through to Darling Nikki. But that song loses all the punch from the original mix. The amazing percussion is completely lost and the ending guitar solo loses its prominence in the mix completely.

    When Doves Cry sounds like it’s been redone again and is not the original Spatial Audio mix, at least to my ears. It’s almost like they really pushed the envelope originally to dramatically rework the song but now they’ve been much more conservative and I’m not sure that’s the right approach.

    As a whole this album remix is……ok, almost good. But the quality of the original WDC remix promised a lot more.

  11. Hopefully the record will work longer … than in my collection : TFT The hurting, ABC the Lexicon of Love. Both were no longer playable after a few weeks. In new condition, this was no problem. Is it perhaps due to inferior quality of the material? I’m curious. And let me be surprised…

  12. Deal alert for Diamonds And Pearls Super Deluxe CD Box Set on Amazon £68.39 by 3rd party seller Global_DealsUK. Lowest price I’ve seen. Showing 5 copies left currently.

  15. I’m curious what this mix is like. The 2017 remaster isn’t bad, but to my ears it’s always sounded a bit off. I’m hoping for a top-quality re-remaster for the 40th anniversary.

  19. I’m having a listen now through Apple Music. The remix is great – Beautiful Ones sounds so spacious it’s like someone made my room three times the size.

    I’ll definitely get the physical release when it’s out. This might be my favourite atmos mix I’ve heard.

  20. Great news. Any Prince album on physical Atmos, I’m in. Of course I’m hoping for a proper 40 year anniversary Purple Rain reissue with all the songs by all artists in the movie in single and extended version. If they will release an audio blu-ray, chances are they will release more than just that if they are celebrating the 40th anniversary. This is promising.

  21. Good news! The CD reissue a few years ago was massively brickwalled and too loud/compressed to enjoy on a good stereo.

    Hoping to fold down the new Atmos mix into stereo for better sound quality. Would also be nice if the new Blu-Ray had a less compressed stereo mix.

  22. Is there any news about a new Vinyl-version as well? The recent official one I bought, I think from 2017, is not very good. And the reviews for a 2020 follow-up are not really enthusiastic as well.

  24. I don’t have Atmos and probably never will, but it I don’t mind getting these discs if they come with a nice Hi-Res stereo version. This is my favourite Prince album, so will see what they put on it.

    1. Why? Unless it’s a completely different mix or master, “Hi-res” offers absolutely zero benefit to the end listener. 99% of “Hi-res” releases are the exact same mix/master, with the exact same DR values as their 44.1/16 counterparts.

  27. I eagerly anticipate the forthcoming blu-ray disc and its availability in your shop. Especially Computer Blue in atmos must be sublime.

      1. Paul, whilst I agree that you can indeed get both 5.1 and stereo mixes from Atmos, the 5.1 or Stereo mixes you get are often in some way incomplete and missing certain aspects because the fold down simply ignores some of the Atmos channels.

        Whereas 5.1 fold down to stereo appears to be complete and whilst it often won’t recreate the actual stereo mix (it can be sometimes if encoded correctly) I find stereo from 5.1 far better than stereo from Atmos.

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