Dolby Atmos Music Production 101: A Showdown of 3 Atmos Workflows
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- čas přidán 13. 07. 2024
- Three different ways to start working with Dolby Atmos. Let's compare!
Join my Discord Server: discord.spaceforaudio.com
Samples by Duende Sounds: duendesounds.com/
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:48 Project setup
04:23 Internal Atmos Renderer workflow and basic principles
08:47 Internal Atmos Renderer workflow - pros and cons
09:52 Fiedler Audio Atmos Composer workflow
16:24 Fiedler Audio Atmos Composer workflow - pros and cons
18:42 External Atmos Renderer workflow - Cubase
27:08 External Atmos Renderer workflow - Nuendo
33:44 External Atmos Renderer workflow - pros and cons
34:40 Final thoughts
Links:
Mastering Spatial Sound: Using the External Dolby Atmos Renderer with Cubase: • Mastering Spatial Soun...
Getting started with Dolby Atmos in Cubase/Nuendo: • Getting started with D... - Věda a technologie
I am new to professional spatial audio and here to learn. I worked within Cubase primarily since 2009 but used trackers in the late 90s.
Cubase is a good one to get started with spatial audio. It has everything you need already built in.
Been using the full version of Dolby atmos composer since you introduced it to me as soon as it came out. In studio one pro 6. Been doing atmos and stereo at the same time setup with beam in fx tracks which is great because automatically it sends at -6db which for my gain staging is almost perfect by default to stat below-18 LUFS on my loudest metal / hip hop productions. A those fx tracks goes into a bus muted. That bus runs into a bus with composer on it before my mixbus. I got it setup in a way I can click that composer bus on and off to maintain perceived gain but keep below-18 in atmos.
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
I'm an electronic music composer who recently got a bit excited listening to one of my releases with apple airpods spatial audio, and want to figure out how to create and release music with spatial audio that people can listen to interactively, using the head tracking feature of the airpods. I've been going through your videos, and have set up Ableton with E4L and NxOSC, I just got that working tonight, so I'm just beginning to experiment.
Thanks for all these videos! There's a lot to learn, but the idea that anybody can listen to it with a pair of popular and widely available headphones was what put me over the edge to finally allow myself to become excited about using more than just a stereo mix.
If you are a passionate Ableton user (like me), I recommend looking at Fiedler Audio Atmos Composer. It works well with Ableton and allows you to produce deliverables for spatial audio distribution.
@@michaelgwagner Thanks!! That sounds like exactly what I'm looking for, much appreciated!
@@michaelgwagner Do you recommend a head tracking solution for use with Fiedler Audio Atmos Composer? Oh, I see, Virtuoso, I'm investigating that now.
There is an update to Virtuoso. I have a video scheduled to go live late June.
Your videos have really helped me understand Atmos. I want to switch to Atmos for my videos, but I keep having issues with Resolve.
Thanks! Resolve is a bit of a weird one because you can only use IMF deliverables for Atmos video. So you can use Atmos but only in a very limited way.
@@michaelgwagner Yes, that’s what I’m finding. I don’t really need it for my channel currently, but I want to use it in the future.
@@johnmorrisproductions do tell more, I just acquired license for Resolve, haven't yet had time to set it up? What are the issues? Please send links where to find more info, thnx - my experience with Resolve was limited to the free version, and now I am too switching my audio to Dolby Atmos.
@@dokma_eu The problems I’ve had in Resolve are:
1. I can’t seem to be able to change the position of the audio in 3D space on a consistent basis.
2. The bus mapping keeps breaking, and my audio doesn’t play back properly.
3. I can’t seem to be able to export it properly in Atmos.
I don’t know how to fix this, but for now I’m just going to export in stereo or 5.1 surround depending on the project.
I haven't seen the Atmos Renderer binaural options to set each bed position as Off/Near/Mid/Far for psychoacoustic positioning in the Fiedler solution?
I think they are only available in the full version, but they are there.
Thank you, Michael, your YT channel is one of the most valuable information sources on how to do Dolby Atmos (and not just that). Thank you! But what I am currently thinking of is - which interface should I acquire, either an audio interface (UAD Apollo x16, or similar - even RME Fireface UFX III which doesn't have enough outputs and the price tag is hefty) or digital mixer (Presonus StudioLive Series III 32R, has 16 aux outputs that I could use for speakers, also has AVB ethernet to connect directly to my DAW, I guess?)? So my question is - which one should I go with? My intention is to connect my Gelenec speakers to get the Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 setup but what worries me is - which one of the two solutions might be better (audio interface or digital mixer), or should I use Cubase Pro renderer, or rather external Dolby Atmos renderer (on Mac, which obviously requires another Mac, hopefully MacBook Air M1 would suffice?) - so which one of the two solutions is better when it comes to time allignement of 7.1.4 speaker setup? What are the upsides, and which are the downsides of either solution? What do you say? Of course, budget IS important.
Thanks! I’m not that knowledgeable about hardware setups but I see most people go for a reasonably priced audio interface. The least expensive option would be the Behringer U-Phoria UMC1820 together with a Behringer ADA8200 to add the additional analog outputs needed for 7.1.4. But there are also interfaces from Presonus or Focusrite you could use. Obviously, there are also more expensive options.
Hi Michael, thanks for the interesting video. Just to mention, we are working on mp4, speaker calibration and the multithreading issue (which is not trivial, but we think that there is a solution). The fader issue is currently unsolvable since the DAWs do not give information on where the fader is. Regarding panning device usability issues, what in your opinion is not working as good as it should? What do you see as a con here?
Thanks! Great to hear that you are working on the multithreading issue. I can imagine that this is a tough nut to crack. The usability problems come primarily from defaulting to Euler angles which is a bit unintuitive in a regular top down projection. It would be nice to be able to control xyz with the knobs if you switch to cartesian coordinate mode.
@@michaelgwagner Maybe we do that at some point. Although the choice of using angles is actually more future proof as it is really listener centric. I know that it is different to the panners used in the other Atmos scenarios but cartesian coordinates do not really represent what is going on sonically as there is no real room within which you move an object. The idea is really to give the user a way of panning which enables him to sonically achieve what he wants with the least amount of work and which is conceptually listener centric. When you listen to something in real life as a human, you do not think in terms of x,y,z in the space around you, you think of the direction from where the sound is coming and it's distance from you. I know, it is kind of philosophical but I think this is the way to better spatial mixing. The mindset is very important.
Also the angles in the Dolby cartesian coordinate system are wrong, for example if you want to put an object to the left speaker, which is at 30° azimuth in your studio, you have to move the object to the left corner, which is geometrically at 45°. Also there is some unavoidable snapping in the upper plane making smooth circular movements they're almost impossible. Or try to create a circular motion using one knob/parameter, impossible in cartesian coordinates. And the speaker in the studio are conceptually equidistant to the listener. If they are not because of the limitations of the studio construction, they have to be made quasi-equidistant by using delays, so that sound from every speaker reaches the listener at the same time. That fact is also best represented by angles, which is why speaker positions in any standard are expressed in angles.
We really thought a lot about what coordinate system to go with and until now we see way more pro's than con's when using the angular coordinates. But we are also open to any input to help improve our products.
Btw. have you checked out the 5 different panning modes in the 3 panning views? They give you a lot of different options for moving your objects around easily, even in kind of a cartesian way. You don't have to use only the knobs.
@fiedler-audio Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the panning modes help. I just think it would be advantageous if the panner behaves like the other Atmos panners.
@@michaelgwagner Ok, apart from being used to cartesian coordinates when mixing Atmos, are there other reasons?
@fiedler-audio I think that‘s primarily it.
Hello Michael, I enjoy your tutorials very much. Regarding immersive music production, would you consider doing some in depth tutorials on the Sony 360 Reality Audio technology -- and specifically the 360 WalkMix Creator application? It appears to have a richer feature set and more elegant workflow for pure music creation than Atmos (i.e. non-film scoring, non-remixing or remastering workflows). For instance, Sony 360 makes available 128 Objects, and approaches immersive playback from a truly spherical speaker array configuration (there are speakers actually below the listening postion plane). I am a Nuendo 12 user, so Atmos compatibility is not an unknown arena to me, but I’d love to see some attention given to the other technologies out there. Thanks so much!
I’ve looked into this but the technology is a bit on the expensive side just to make one video. It’s interesting though.
So for logic pro users would you personally recommend just using the built in atmos option within logic? Have you by any chance resolved the issue of 3d object tracks that are instrument tracks going out of synch in logic’s built in atmos option?
Yes, especially if you use Airpods because if the integrated head tracking. I have not yet heard anything with respect to the sync issue, unfortunately. That does not mean there isn’t a solution. I’m just not a regular Logic user.
Do you recommend anywhere for downloading Atmos reference tracks, particularly electronic music? I'd like to test out some of these binaural downmix algorithms, and analyse some good sounding Atmos mixes myself
Hop over to our Discord. People are often sharing their master files there.
My problem with the fiddler atmos plugin was i could not get the audio to go out to the correct speaker outs :(
You can remap the outs with Dante Via. There are a couple of video coming up later this month where I use Dante Via for that purpose.
@@michaelgwagner I look forward to those very much :) I had to give it a miss which was a shame as it really looked promising and the panner is not very good as you say.. Hopefully Fiddler will sort out these issues :)
Just wanted to let everyone know that it appears that method 3 (internal Nuendo processing with the external Dolby renderer) only appears to work when Nuendo is run in Rosetta, the Dolby external renderer does not appear while running Nuendo natively on an M1 Mac.
No idea when this will be fixed or who needs to fix it! lol
Yes, thanks! I have not checked that myself but people contacted me about this. On my system Nuendo always opens in Rosetta for some reason.
This made me curious and I double checked. Apparently the fact that it always opens in Rosetta is a bug. There seems to be a workaround.
@@michaelgwagner yes, I had the same fault initially and I think I had to toggle the ‘open in Rosetta’ checkbox, start Nuendo, quit then uncheck the ‘open in Rosetta’ checkbox for it to run natively.
FTR, really appreciating your videos.
🙏