Transform Your Sound: Preparing and Exporting Dolby Atmos Mixes in Pro Tools
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- Join me, Greg D Engineer, a seasoned freelance audio engineer, as we delve into the intricacies of transitioning your stereo mixes into immersive Dolby Atmos soundscapes using Pro Tools.
This step-by-step guide covers everything from initial file preparation to exporting the final deliverables. It is not intended to demonstrate specific mix techniques or hardware configurations. Embrace the creative options available in this new audio format.
In this video I will discuss why you might consider publishing your production in Dolby Atmos and I will show you my workflow for preparing, configuring, and exporting an Atmos music production for delivery to Apple Music, Spotify, etc.
Time stamps
0:00 Intro
0:29 Why Atmos?
2:18 Preparing your tracks for export.
5:48 Consolidate and review the tracks.
13:04 Exporting Tracks for Atmos.
17:01 Configuring the Dolby Renderer.
20:45 Configure Pro Tools I/O.
32:30 Import Audio & set VCA group.
35:08 Review & Print the Atmos Mix.
45:19 Export the final Atmos Mix & Binaural Re-render.
Resources:
Avid Pro Tools:
www.avid.com/pro-tools
Dolby Renderer:
www.avid.com/plugins/dolby-at...
Dolby Resources: professionalsupport.dolby.com...
More about me: gregdengineer.com
Disclaimer:
All content in this video is used for educational purposes under fair use guidelines. Special thanks to Gabriel BG and my friend Gino.
Artist Credits: Gabriel BG “Nice To Know You” ; Gabriel BG "Idiot Nation"
Let us keep the conversation going here in the comment section. The workflow is sure to evolve. Like, subscribe, and follow for updates and other music production content. Thanks for checking out my very first CZcams publication!
So Helpful....! thanks!
Thank you so much for this very clear, practical and hands on tutorial! I presume that this is an emerging technologie coming from the cinema mixing world, now getting ready for mixing AND mastering of music. Again a perfect master-mind from the Dolby tech-guys. Remember Dolby A for multitrack recorders? Dolby B and C for cassettes? And now finally they did it again by giving back a bit of space and some air to mixes in the digital domain. The -18dB lufs and -1 dBtp will give us back some of the good old dynamics, and even a bit of headroom. No more pitty for mister 'I've got a plugin and I'm gonna whack it up to 11", but some real technical skills and a good pair of trained ears are needed to get this baby going.
Great comment 👍
Thanks for taking the time to do this video. Two things: I think you´re using FFOA the wrong way or as a trick to have a pre roll. FFOA is used when you have, say a two beep signal for sync purposes, prior to the start of the actual first frame of action. FFOA would then be used to signal the exact first frame of the action and exclude the two beep. If you don´t have that, FFOA doesn´t need to be used at all, just leave the field blank. And after you select the audio to be printed in PT and on the renderer set the appropriate in and Out, just use the pre roll feature on Protools, setting it at the top window counter.
Another thing relates to when you said your bass management settings in the renderer has a crossover of 50Hz, so all material bellow that frequency is going to the Lfe channel. Maybe I didn´t get it right as english is not my native language, but the Lfe channel has nothing to do with bass management. When you set a crossover of 50 Hz for your room´s bass management on the renderer, what it does is summing everything bellow 50 Hz and send it to the subwoofer just for monitoring purposes. The same subwoofer (or others if you have more than one), is receiving also the Lfe channel of your mix. But if you don´t send anything to the Lfe from your tracks, your mix won´t have any signal on the Lfe channel, despite on your listening environment you being able to monitor bellow 50 Hz on your sub and the speakers handling above that. It´s a common confusion. A subwoofer is not the Lfe, is just the speaker that gets it and also the bass management part of the signal bellow a determined crossover point.
EDIT: Also, make sure that everything that you send to the Lfe has a low pass filter on it, otherwise you´re sending full range signals to the Lfe. In particular when you use the dedicated small fader on the protools panner. I usually create an aux with a low pass inserted at 80Hz or maybe higher until 100 Hz and assign it to the bed Lfe. Is also an easy way to send signals from Objects to there as well. If you want to use the small Lfe fader on protools panner, you need to insert the plugin on the Lfe channel of the multichannel master or aux that feeds the bed.
HEY GREG, THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO. THIS IS A LOT OF HELP. I ABOUT TO JUMP TO ATMOS BUT I NEEDED A VIDEO JUST LIKE THIS SO I KNOW HOW TO SET UP MY PT SESSION.. JUST WANTED TO THANK YOU. I JUST SUBSCRIBED TO YOUR CHANNEL.. HOPE YOU KEEP MAKING THESE TYPE OF VIDEOS. IT WOULD BE NICE IF YOU CAN DO ONE ACTUALLY MIXING JUST TO LEARN THE APPROACHES YOU MAKE, THAT WAY WE DEFINITELY CAN SEE SOME WAYS OF MIXING ATMOS. JUST HAD ONE QUESTION, WHEN YOU COMMIT YOUR TRACKS, YOU DONT COMMIT YOUR MASTER BUSS, CORRECT ?? THANKS AGAIN BUD.. KEEP UP THESE INFORMATIONAL VIDEOS !!
Thanks for your info. (liked and subscribed)
I'm a sound engineer and have been in the industry professionally a little over 25 years. I've been heavily involved in Atmos for the past 5. So aside from what has been covered here, here's a little view into my perspective. (it's quite wordy/detailed, so get a snack).
I believe mixes should be done in a way that lets the artist push their creative expression to where they are imagining it in their minds. I'm not talking about the format (mono, stereo, surround, immersive) I'm talking about figuring out where the artist imagines the listener is placed in the room/experience.
Having worked with artists and producers for over 25 years I can confidently say that the VERY large majority of musicians don't think of mixes in those terms. Instead, they are experiencing sound in their minds sonic playback system and my job is to help them figure out how to portray that in a way their fans can experience their creations the way the artist intended.
Immersive (for me) IS the creative environment that finally allows everything from mono to stereo to surround to "from anywhere around and above you like in real life".
Immersive is the playground space. The musical buffet if you will, but using immersive doesn't dictate you play on every ride at the playground or have some of everything in the buffet.
In immersive you have the option for X, Y and Z axis, but you don't even have to do anything more than a single mono sound. Immersive could be a simple clarinet in a room or on a stage and the listener is hearing the sound in the same manner (ITD and ILD and even HRTF) the way we experience sound in real life. Or you can go completely against nature and make it completely anechoic or totally washed out a spinning all around you.
Because of how we perceive sound stereo only actually exists when we are close enough to a sound source that the front energy wave of different elements of the same sound source reach one ear before the other. We do experience stereo in life as we get very close to sound sources OR as sources pass by us - like a car etc. But we he experience sound in real life mostly from a never ending change in mono objects happening all around us outside and inside. When outside these sounds interact by reflecting off surfaces around us. When inside, the room suddenly becomes a stereo reinforcement of mono objects (unless we are REALLY close to them. A drum set is a collection of mono instruments gathered into a small space. But we consider it one instrument, so when we are close to it, different cymbals/toms will be perceived in different ears resulting in a stereoscopic effect due to ITD, ILD and accompanying phase relationships.
We are used to the sound of music being pushed at us in music because years ago the industry did this fancy upgrade from mono. But in real life we are affected by critical distance and micro delay (early/1st reflections) to help us orient to the sound - even in spaces where we don't "think" we hear anything but the sound source. But other than anechoic spaces, the reflections from the surrounding surfaces, objects, walls, floor and ceiling all contribute to what we perceive as the sound source and those cues help us localize the sound and it helps define and most often even color the sound.
Immersive audio lets you experience music in a much more engaging way - whether you are pushing sounds at the listener in stereo or from various locations around/above them, even if it's just letting sound reflect off surfaces around them - even if the listener doesn't think they perceive them.
If an artist wan't the drums to have more energy, I have found that conservatively more than 80% of the time, what they have trouble articulating is they want to hear the drums reflecting off the walls. It could be as a reverb, but generally, just a simple 1st reflection with a little pre-delay (like what we experience in real life waiting for the drums to travel to the wall and then to us) creates this reinforcement of the drums in a very minimally delayed manner that gives it almost a 2nd layer of existence that can be as bright or dark as needed, but because the sound continues on for that 90 milliseconds beyond the performance transients, and doesn't kick in for maybe 20-80 ms (essentially the equivalent of 20-80' based on speed of sound), we suddenly feel like we can start to visualize where the drums are located. The moment that happens, energy from that reinforced reflection creates the "energy" being asked for. If those reflections are only coming from in front of me, that would be odd when I could also creatively direct them to come from the sides and/or back to behave they do any other time we ever hear drums. Not required, but there is such a WIDE range of options.
POINT BEING...Mix in ATMOS and let the rerenderer mix down to stereo. If it is being mixed well, there won't be ANY translation issues. If the Atmos mix is not being mixed well, the stereo rerender will have issues. But there is NO need to try to mix a song in stereo and then somehow try to unbake the cake and reuse some of the elements designed for a stereo space and repurpose them for an immersive presentation...even if they are anechoic, dry mono elements. Mix to the best method first and THEN downmix from there. The rerenders sound FANTASTIC. In surround and stereo! Atmos mixes should be purpose-made. not bounced down elements that are then somehow pushed into immersive.
You haven't addressed any of the key issues with this atmos format, phase issues, the same room reverb effect on all the tracks reducing each tracks individuality, to name but a few,
your pitch to make it sound perfect actually makes it sound like a nightmare,
please also leave out the 'status talk' (I'm a professional talk), it doesn't help anyone
You're asking to make a stereo mix more costly unnecessarily difficult to achieve for nothing - mix with several speakers for atmos, then convert to stereo?? It doesn't make sense.
Mono and Stereo are big markets
Atmos is a small market
Why would you risk ruining a mix for a large market, only to please a small market?
It doesn't make sense. It sounds backwards.
At the moment, the only reason why some platforms are accepting atmos is because Dolby is doing business deals behind the scenes (paying them to accept it)
It's almost like Dolby is trying to create an artificial market
Are you connected with Dolby in anyway? (that's a lot of text there, it makes it look like damage control in a way)
Anything atmos or Immersive is for Films, Post Production
The number of studios who have bought into this atmos thing, has sold much of the gear they bought and left it, (doesn't pay the bills because the format is not naturally wanted)
Where is Dolby to give them a refund?
@@arnolenke wow, I just don’t even know how to respond to that. I have zero connection to Dolby. I have LOTS of frustration with them because of several things I’ve gone through and still am going through. BUT I’m a sound engineer. I am in the business of producing professional audio, and using the tools that allow me to do that in the categories I work in. I’ve been doing this for a little over 25 years.
The way I hear people talk about Atmos is the same way I heard people talk about switching from analog to digital. I was right there as a 26-year-old having to suddenly look on a computer screen to mix audio.
But, I also realized that digital was the way the entire industry was shifting and so I shifted with it. What no one talks about, is analog used to cost between $150,000 and $500,000 just to be in the game, the right way and the real way .
Now a bunch of people sit at home with a$2000- $6000 computer and maybe another 10 grand in equipment complaining that something just doesn’t suit them. Sheesh, I feel so bad for everyone’s horrific pain of having to have things so easy now.
The crazy thing is now, someone can grab an iPad Pro and logic Pro and be producing actual pro audio. What’s the complaining all about?
I’m trying to do a service to help shed some light on a category that’s been around for many many years and what silly is that the people who should care most about the development of getting sound to sound the best are the ones complaining the most about it. What’s even crazier is how many people who claim they are in professional Audio think immersive audio is a new thing and that Dolby invented it. I’ve been in Atmos for five years now as a recording engineer, and the industry is still treating it like it’s brand new. It’s very much NOT new. It’s just the silly battles and arm wrestles between companies of trying to bring it to some form of standard, that people are actually willing to pay for. That’s the issue. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop doing my full-time sound engineering waiting for companies to figure it out. I’m the sound engineer and it’s MY job to figure out workarounds. That’s what engineers do.
The dilemma I have is I sit and see so many people thinking that Atmos IS immersive. It’s NOT. Atmos is simply a container and delivery and playback format that delivers a bunch of audio files and panning information that are associated with channel based audio in what we call beds and object based audio that is free to move around the X/Y/Z axis.
I’m not in the business of Atmos, I’m a sound engineer interested in producing immersive audio whether it’s for film or games or virtual reality or augmented reality. I don’t care whose brand or label is on the delivery format.
People who aren’t getting good mixes with Atmos are people who aren’t putting in the time to learn how to get good mixes. Atmos can literally be a single clarinet with one microphone with zero reverb or effects on it. You have lots of control… But that’s the point, the all USER has to be the sound engineer. If they want the program to do things for them they’re in the wrong industry . It took me 10 years before I felt like I was even mixing stereo at a level worth being on the market. Everyone else said it was at a pro level, but I’ve never been satisfied with things just sounding. “good” . People pay money for things to sound great and fantastic and it’s my job to figure out how to get it to sound that way using the tools that let me produce the sound they are needing.
Just because someone’s frustrated about something doesn’t mean it’s not a valid category. Believing something doesn’t make it so .
Immersive audio - including Atmos format and many others have been around a LONG time now. And now It’s all over the place with VR. It’s all over the place with games and theater installations and coming to cars.
If someone is against Atmos, I’m going to invite them to walk around with some cotton in one of their ears for the day so they can see what life is like when you don’t listen to things in immersive/spatial/binaural. Spatial is literally hiw the human body is designed to hear and perceive sound.
This reply is not directed towards any one specifically. It’s directed towards the category of people who haven’t taken the time to learn for themselves, how sound works and how we perceive it and how immersive audio is what gets us closest to that. If you have a problem with a company, don’t buy their stuff. If you have a problem with listening to localized sound, plug one of your ears.
If you want to mix audio in an immersive format, do it it takes with what you have and build as you can until you can get into a speaker based system so you can make Audio-based decisions on a sound energy based monitoring system versus a bin Oral representation. if you want to hear sort of the state state of the union of Atmos specifically from the guy who mixed more music and Atmos than anyone else, search up the interview with Steve Genewick from a couple weeks ago. He talks about it for quite a while with one of his former coworkers from Capitol.
@@ProAudioIQ
The shift from Analog to Digital is nothing like the attempt Dolby is trying to push for atmos.
The comparison people are making for atmos is basically what 5.1 surround was and yes, surround was pushed by Dolby as "the future" (which it was not) and now Dolby is pushing atmos as "the future" (which it is not). Film and Music are just different, Home theater enthusiasts do not represent the behaviours of the music world. I can understand you're a fan of atmos and your work involves film, games and VR, but fans of atmos are a very small group, much like a home theater enthusiasts.
Films, Video Games and VR have sound, but they do not represent the music world.
The application setup for anything immersive is again, only utilised by a small group of people, sadly today there are for more people listening to music on their phones than anything else, so immersive really doesn't make any sense when one of the most chosen listening playback mediums is a small phone. Headphones again comes with various reduction in quality unless the very expensive products are used, but how many people can afford them? So once again, the playback medium is likely compromised, so attempting to add immersive into the mix is very likely to further complicate and reduce quality.
But they’re not pushing. They’ve had it there for years and years and more years. They’re not doing anything that Sony and Meta-haven’t also been doing. Somehow sound engineers are angry though, because they have to do something new in their lives with sound… Or not. If you’re not a fan of immersive, walk away from it. Find your groove and your niche and become the best you can in that. Not everyone needs to or actually should be involved in immersive. Immersive for music is actually the last one to the party believe it or not.
You have to dig in a little bit. Even Check out what Microsoft and meta-are researching and universities and computer scientists with life enhancing VR/AR and their developments in ITD, ILD, HRTF, and anthropometrics for hearing aids for the deaf
Immersive isn’t just about music. It’s about how we experience sound. Music as one of those amazing things is finally getting the attention it has been waiting for for a long time. And It’s got all the expected growing pains.
But if you’re not interested in actually learning what immersive audio actually is and how we do (and don’t) perceive and if someone isn’t interested in understanding what Atmos actually is, and the part Dolby actually plays (and every other known and faceless developer in that exact same space), in providing the capabilities of various tech you personally experience on a daily basis, there’s nothing more I can offer you here. I can help you get to next steps, but I don’t have time nor interest In trying to convince anyone of anything. My comments are here to help actual sound engineers, and those interested in next steps in discovering immersive audio. There is SO much more to it than what social media has the capacity to ever portray or relay.
Do yourself a favor, and if you are even casually involved in professional audio, take a second and at least watch the very recent video with Steve Genewick about Atmos. I’m as quick to call out the problems as he is -as are many others, but it’s no different than when we started being able to shop online or stream movies back when the Internet speeds could barely handle it. Help make the space better. If you’re out, that’s fine, but don’t dissuade others who are IN especially when the information is not accurate and is simply repeating things heard from people online. Get your own hands in it and work with it for a few years and then I’ll buy you lunch and we can talk about what you’ve discovered.
I don’t know who you are, and you don’t know me, but you’re saying the same things that so many others are saying who also don’t have the experience [yet] with immersive to be able to understand how some of the painful early issues changed a long time ago. Now we’re onto to brand new cool things and new issues that also are changing in some instances on a weekly basis.
I don’t know if you remember when CD players came out, but if not, there were some very painful years before manufacturers learned how to create decent anti-listing filters. Digital was promising and seemed to have a lot of potential, but listening to CDs felt like listening to razor blades. Those problems are now behind us, but how many people are still holding onto some bizarre argument that “analog is better than digital”.
Then they get introduced to words like saturation, harmonics, distortion, and even /odd order harmonics and noise and dynamic range, bias,wow and flutter, nyquist, sample rate, bit depth, quantization, Least significant bit, noise shaping, dither and missing fundamental theory and that’s literally just a simple list off the top of my head without even thinking about it because those ARE the details that no one ever needs to know about unless they are engineering sound, at which point those words define so much of the good and bad we’ve gone through the last 30+ years.
Many of those used to be topics of heated conversation. Now we have a whole new group of words that people like to debate about, yet so many serial naysayers are so reluctant to want to take the time to actually understand what’s really going on and see why we should spend our time learning about what’s up rather than debating why and how companies like Dolby and Sony, Google, Microsoft ,Meta and Nintendo are trying to move us from the horse and wagon to this weird thing called the car. They can’t fix all the potholes in the roads, but they can give us air-conditioning and help the ride be faster and smoother.. It just takes some time and great critical feedback from the community trying to use it.
I genuinely invite anyone who is seriously needing help knowing next steps to contact me and I’ll do my best to point you very quickly where to look . As a starting point, watch at least Steve G’s recent interview! Just for some perspective and vocabulary to start your search.
@@arnolenke quick sidenote, I’m trying very sincerely to understand your perspective, but the things you’re saying, do not coincide with what’s actually happening in the music industry. You’re speaking very definitively, but it doesn’t track with what’s actually happening yes, part of what I do is involved in Film . The past 15 years I’ve been working in surround. Surround is there if consumers want to listen to it but I think it’s a waste because there’s no direct path between surround and binaural. But there is between immersive, audio, and binaural for the consumer to use the same earbuds they’ve been using for years, even if they want . The entire reason I got into Atmos had nothing to do with Dolby. I was getting into Atmos for the music I write and produce, and had to essentially pull Dolby along several times so I could get some help from them. I’ve only experienced resistance along the way from them and still am. They are a tech creation company and B2B organization and not a consumer friendly organization. That’s why their decoders live inside products and we don’t have to buy them individually. The only instance I can think of that I’ve personally experienced outside of that is when I had to download a free Dolby app so an Xbox 360 could stream Atmos from Amazon prime.
Watch the interview from Peter Gabriel talking about why he wanted to use immersive audio in his last album I/o. He’s speaking as a musician and artist. He has no interest in the tech, just the results. Take a second to listen to it in binaural and then again in stereo. No one is trying to push anything on you. Like the cupholders in the armrest in the backseat of my car. I probably will never use them. They are there if someone does need thembut no one pushing me to use them. If you’re not interested in listening to immersive audio, disable it on your phone and don’t use Apple AirPods. When I mix in Dolby Atmos, I’m able to create one mix that becomes any channel width -based on that one mix that I did. I no longer have to charge the client for a separate stereo mix. I can use the rerenders which are amazingly good and work better than any down mixer I’ve used , even the expensive ones that I’ve invested in. Watch the videos from Andrew Shepps watch the videos from Steve Genewick. Don’t watch videos from Dolby. They’re pretty much useless… Because again, they don’t know how to interface with the customer. Don’t even watch videos from avid. Those are sometimes even more painful and less effective.
The more I look at this atmos thing, the more useless it is
atmos puts this room reverb effect on ALL the tracks
why would I want the entire track going through it? it's a waste of money
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Dolby Atmos. I understand your concerns, and initially, I had some reservations myself. However, I think there might be a bit of a misunderstanding about what Atmos really does. It's not just about adding reverb to everything. Atmos provides a sophisticated way to deliver a single file that can adapt to various playback systems, from stereo to advanced surround formats. This flexibility allows us, as engineers, to control how our mix translates across different systems, which wasn't as straightforward with traditional mixing formats.
From my own experience, working with Atmos has significantly enhanced the quality of my productions. Even in a two-channel render, the mix feels more cohesive, punchy, and fuller. There's an added depth and dimension to the sound that I personally find very appealing. It's that elusive 1% improvement we're always chasing in our field.
If you're still skeptical, I'd suggest experimenting with it yourself. Take a mix that you're already happy with in stereo and try creating an Atmos version. You don't necessarily need high-end tools to start; something like Logic Pro can be a great, cost-effective way to explore Atmos. Alternatively, if you'd like, I could upmix one of your previous productions to give you a sense of what's possible with this format.
While it's natural for us engineers to be wary of new formats and trends, I believe Atmos deserves a chance. It might just surprise you with its capabilities.
@@GregDEngineer I've listened to a couple found-downs from atmos to stereo and it a lossy process, atmos seems to add a small degrading element at all levels and cannot be classed as high quality.
Check out "Somebody Else" by The 1975 or if your into heavier stuff the "True Power" record by I Prevail. Both available on apple music. Exemplary productions.
@@arnolenkewhen you say lossy, you don't make sense. Can you give a better description? The normal sense of lossy as jargon doesn't apply to this conversation especially when you say stereo, there's no stereo down-summing from Atmos. Stereo is 2 channel so if you're saying you've reduced your Atmos decode to 2 speakers, that still isn't considered stereo so that might be the "lossy" aspect you're misinterpreting. The term of two channel "stereo" still doesn't translate, that's why you refer to it as binaural instead. The binaural image is not a "stereo" image, it requires specific headsets or devices that can decode binaural as the projection is object based. Lastly, when you say "lossy" that typical is jargon reserved for compression encoding, so unless you're talking about trying to do DOLBY ATMOS in DSD, 32-BIT float bit depth 48khz+ PCM isn't lossy as it's not encoded with algorithms, it's Pulse Code modulated.
So therefore, I'm asking what you mean so I can understand beyond what I currently understand, and so others don't confuse what your saying with what they know from the typical understand of lossy formats. Thank you.
I took the time to write a lengthy/detailed response EXACTLY because of this perception. Look above. Hopefully it will expand understanding/perspective of immersive/in binaural or multiple speaker playback (whether in Atmos or Meta's or Google's container etc)
Wow pro tools overly complicates everything