The Berliner Philharmoniker at home in Immersive Sound

Launched in 2008, the Digital Concert Hall broadcasts the Berliner Philharmoniker's concerts live from the Berlin Philharmonie and preserves them in a vast archive. But its true distinctiveness lies in the quality of the experience: 4K UHD since 2017, lossless Hi-Res since 2021, and now Dolby Atmos for live broadcasts.

Technology in service of a simple ambition: to bring, as much as possible, the Philharmonie's acoustics and emotion into the living room for lovers of great sound.

There is something deeply consistent in the evolution of the Digital Concert Hall. Since its launch in 2008, the Berliner Philharmoniker's platform has pursued the same ambition: to make the concert experience as faithful and immediate as possible, even when the listener is hundreds or thousands of kilometers from Berlin.

Technology is never an end in itself here. It serves a musical purpose: to progressively narrow the distance between the orchestra and the listener.

A step ahead in streaming

The Digital Concert Hall had already taken a step ahead with the arrival of Ultra High Definition video in 2017.

Concerts can now be streamed in 3840 × 2160 pixels, with HDR/HLG and the BT.2020 color space.

A resolution that renders the orchestra's layout, the conductor's gestures, and the soloists' expressions with remarkable precision.

But it is above all in terms of sound that the platform has set itself apart.

In June 2021, the Berliner Philharmoniker introduced lossless Hi-Res Audio, becoming the first video streaming platform to pair UHD picture with a studio-quality lossless audio track. The signal uses the FLAC codec, with a resolution of up to 24-bit/96 kHz. At the time, the press release announced a bitrate of 1,400 kbit/s at 24/48 and up to 2,800 kbit/s at 24/96.

A detail of particular interest to audiophiles: this quality isn't reserved for a premium package. It's part of the standard Digital Concert Hall experience.

Dolby Atmos goes live

Since 2022, some concerts available in the archive have already featured Dolby Atmos Immersive Audio. But starting with the 2026/27 season, the Berliner Philharmoniker are going further: every concert broadcast live from the Berlin Philharmonie is now offered in Immersive Audio. The first event of this new generation was the opening concert on August 21, 2026, conducted by Kirill Petrenko.

The Digital Concert Hall thus becomes, according to the Berliner Philharmoniker, the first service to regularly offer live classical concerts in this immersive format.

But the point of Dolby Atmos here is not to turn a symphony into a home-theater demonstration.

The approach is far more subtle.

Recreating Berlin's acoustics

To understand what's at stake with Dolby Atmos, we need to go back to the history of the Berlin Philharmonie.

The project was born in the mid-1950s, amid the cultural reconstruction of West Berlin. In 1956, architect Hans Scharoun won the competition with a design radically different from traditional concert halls: the orchestra was to be placed at the center, surrounded by the audience. Construction began in 1960, and the Philharmonie was inaugurated on October 15, 1963, by Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Developed in collaboration with acoustician Lothar Cremer, the hall adopts a terraced layout around the orchestra. This "vineyard" architecture brings the audience closer to the musicians and multiplies the surfaces off which sound can spread and reflect. In 1987, the construction of the Kammermusiksaal, likewise designed on the principle of the audience surrounding the musicians, completed this now-iconic complex.

This architecture has since become intimately tied to the Berliner Philharmoniker's sonic signature. Sound doesn't simply come from the stage: it spreads in every direction, reflects off the various surfaces, and envelops the listener.

It is precisely this dimension that Dolby Atmos Immersive Audio now seeks to recreate. The mix retains the traditional frontal stage, but adds information captured by several microphones placed throughout the auditorium. Direct sound, reflections, and reverberation are thus reproduced in three dimensions.

The challenge, then, is not only to reproduce the sound of the orchestra, but to recapture how sound behaves in a hall designed, more than sixty years ago, as a true acoustic instrument in its own right. The Berlin Philharmonie has an acoustic character inseparable from the orchestra's sonic identity.

The work done for Immersive Audio aims precisely to recreate the hall's direct sound, reflections, and reverberation in three dimensions.

The mix retains a classic frontal sound stage, to which spatial information captured by several microphones placed throughout the auditorium is added. Processing developed specifically for the Philharmonie then converts the signal into Dolby Atmos 7.1.4, with settings tailored to each work and to the orchestra's layout.

The goal, then, is less to make you hear "more sounds" than to make you perceive more of the hall itself.

In Hi-Res stereo, what one seeks is stage precision, section stability, tonal texture, and depth. With Immersive Audio, another dimension emerges: the sensation of being immersed in the Philharmonie's acoustic volume.

An experience accessible on multiple systems

That said, there's no need to turn your living room into a movie theater.

The Digital Concert Hall's Dolby Atmos can be enjoyed on various types of equipment. The platform supports compatible televisions, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Google TV devices, as well as certain iOS and Android mobile devices. Compatible televisions notably include certain LG, Panasonic, Philips, and Sony models.

For an ambitious setup, the most obvious solution is naturally a Dolby Atmos AV receiver paired with several quality Hi-Fi speakers, capable of rendering the three-dimensional sound field.

But the service can also be enjoyed through headphones. With quality suited to a Dolby Atmos-compatible smartphone or tablet and headphones that support spatial audio, the immersive experience becomes accessible without a multichannel setup.

This is probably one of the most interesting aspects of this development: Dolby Atmos no longer reserves the immersive experience solely for owners of a home-theater system.

How to access the Digital Concert Hall

The service is available from a computer, Google Cast, Apple TV, a smartphone or tablet, but also directly on many televisions and streaming devices via dedicated apps.

The catalog now includes more than 900 concert videos spanning six decades, alongside documentaries, interviews, portraits, playlists, and educational content. All concerts and content are accessible with the same subscription.

To fully enjoy 4K and high-quality streaming, a sufficiently fast internet connection naturally remains essential.

How much does the experience cost?

The price remains reasonable given the content on offer: €16.90 per month, with no commitment and cancellation possible at any time, or €169 for twelve months, with no automatic renewal. The Digital Concert Hall also offers a free seven-day trial.

Above all, Dolby Atmos comes at no extra cost. It is therefore included in the existing subscription, just like Hi-Res concerts and UHD content where available.

My verdict

UHD, adopted back in 2017, improved picture quality. Lossless Hi-Res, launched in 2021, brought streaming closer to studio quality. Dolby Atmos is now the next step: reproducing not just the music, but the space in which it comes to life.

For the audiophile, the real interest lies in comparing the two approaches. Hi-Res stereo remains a formidable reference for appreciating how the sound stage is built. Immersive Audio adds that enveloping sense of reverberation and volume, a reminder that in a symphonic concert, the hall itself is part of the music.

With Dolby Atmos now available live, the Digital Concert Hall crosses a new threshold. The concert is no longer merely broadcast from Berlin. It begins to take place around us.

More infos : https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/fr/home

(All photos copyrights : © Berliner Philarmoniker)