# Min. Requirements for Mixing Dolby Atmos (Nuendo + ???)



## wunderflo (Nov 24, 2021)

Hey everyone,

already posted in a couple of threads after lurking for a long time, but now it's time for my first own thread. 
Really love this place and community. Seems as if the good old forum days of like-minded nerds have never been gone in this niche of the internet, and we can just pretend social media was never created. Great! :D

Recently, I highly enjoyed listening to Atmos mixes in Tidal on my stereo headphones (don't have the space or properly treated room for monitors - let alone a surround system). 

Needless to say - as always when listening to something inspiring -, I want to play with it myself now.  Of course, it's already possible for me to create binaural headphone mixes using plugins such as DearVR Pro. However, I'd like to take it a step further, as it's kinda inconvenient to offer music that can only be listened to on headphones.

Thus, I'm considering to get my feet wet in the Atmos world by crossgrading from Cubase to Nuendo (thanks to the BF deal). I still know very little about it, and would like to learn by doing. I'm sure it takes a lot of expensive stuff to create professional Atmos mixes (it always takes a lot of expensive stuff  ). That's not my initial goal, though. If my mixes turn out bad, because I'm only mixing on headphones (and have no clue what I'm doing), that'd be okay. I'm mostly looking for the experience and the training to prepare myself for what I think will become more and more important. Also, I'd only be interested in mixing music. My ultimate goal would be to publish an Atmos mix on streaming services that support it (Distrokid offers that option).

Hence, my question: What are the minimum requirements to create (even bad) Atmos mixes (including the binaural headphone versions)? I read that you'd additionally need the Dolby Atmos Production Suite. However, it only runs on macOS, and I'm on Windows. Then again, Steinberg says that Nuendo supports Atmos natively "in the box", and that it's possible to just use the internal renderer. Does that have any major disadvantages? On some other forum I read that this wouldn't be compatible with headphones (that was pure speculation, though - prior Nuendo 11 was released). 

Sorry, if this all should make little sense. I'm completely new to this topic and quite confused by it - which is wonderful, because it reminds me of my first attempts to produce music back in the days. 

I'd be very grateful for any advice on this matter. Thanks a lot!


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## wunderflo (Nov 24, 2021)

Shortened the initial post a bit. Sorry that it's so long-winded. Maybe I also should have kept the question more general: What are your experiences with mixing Atmos in Nuendo? Did you ever try it? 

I'm still going to test the demo, but I'm not sure how useful that will be, as it'll be hard for me to tell as an Atmos newbie whether something works correctly or whether I'm just doing it wrong. I don't even fully understand yet what should be possible with it.


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## wunderflo (Nov 24, 2021)

found a great video that explains a lot:



Seems like it's possible to create Atmos mixes only using Nuendo.
However, the quality of the downmix might be worse than when using an external renderer? Any experiences with that?

Anyways, that should be good enough for me to get started. I'm very excited!


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Nov 26, 2021)

I set up Atmos in my studio specifically for mastering. Usually I'm working with engineers who mixed the Atmos version on headphones and then I'm able to make sure it all works properly in a full speaker system as well as handling certain housekeeping tasks for releasing an ADM and the usual "mastering" process.

I work in Nuendo on Windows. Unless you're ready to spend a lot and have a complex system, it's not possible on Windows. Yes, you can use the Nuendo renderer except for the fact that it doesn't support the binaural. That means you need to buy DAMS for $1000 (DAPS is Mac only) in order to hear the binaural. Then, since you're on Windows, you can't use the audio bridge which means you need audio connections between Nuendo and DAMS (ideally 128 channels). Most of the time I just work internally in Nuendo without the binarual, export ADM, and then check binaural in DAMS. Obviously this doesn't work if you don't have a full speaker system.

If Nuendo adds binarual support then all of this would be solved. Right now I only have 112 channels between Nuendo and DAMS (only because of a feature limitation in DAMS, technically I have 128 channels available) and it would cost me several thousand dollars to get the interfaces to get me up to the full channel count. Considering that a Nuendo update could make all of this unnecessary (or DAMS update but I doubt Dolby will change anything), I'm waiting at least until the next version of Nuendo is released.

Long story short, Dolby doesn't care about supporting Windows users and Nuendo is missing the critical feature for it. Buying a Mac ends up being cheaper than getting it all to work on Windows. I used to have 5 computers in my studio. Now I have 1. I'm not adding more out of principle so Mac isn't an option for me.

Having said all of that, playing around with surround mixes on headphones can still be fun and you can do it in Nuendo with ambisonics. It just isn't the same as the Atmos binaural so you wouldn't want to release any of that as Atmos content unless you get it checked (in this case both binarual and full speaker playback) by someone who has access to those tool (like me...).


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## Dietz (Nov 26, 2021)

I don't believe that working "binaural" on headphones with non-personalized HRTFs will allow for mixes that translate well for other people, let alone for actual 3D monitor systems. 

And there's another issue (... quoting myself from a posting I wrote on the Nuendo forum a while ago):

_Personally I think that Atmos is actually the least ideal immersive format when we talk strictly about modern music production. (… some kind of "Beta >< VHS situation). The “Object” approach is great for media work, but more or less incompatible with the workflow we are used to in music production nowadays, where mixing and mastering are integral parts of the artistic process, and not so much about purely “technical delivery”. The minuscule details we usually take care for when it comes to positioning, balancing, compression and/or spatialisation are now quite arbitrary “meta data”-based decisions of a rendering device.

What’s more - how is a mastering engineer supposed to deal with dozens of moving “Objects”, when there is no actual “mix bus” anymore? The methods we tried-and-tested for more than half a century now are not applicable any longer.

My personal decision: For music I try to avoid any kind of moving “Objects”, but I mix for a channel-based delivery format instead that gets encoded into “Beds” (or fixed “Objects” with size set to 0) as a last step, after mastering has taken place._

... none of this should discourage anyone from playing around in "3D" and having a great (and I mean _really_ great!) time, but you should at least know what to expect.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Nov 26, 2021)

Dietz said:


> The minuscule details we usually take care for when it comes to positioning, balancing, compression and/or spatialisation are now quite arbitrary “meta data”-based decisions of a rendering device.


I'd argue the opposite. You make a stereo mix and are stuck with how it sounds everywhere. Speakers, headphones, earbuds, phone speakers, car, etc. With Atmos you can optimize it for all of those formats and simultaneously have all of the possibilities of surround added in. The tools just don't give enough flexibility yet.

Mastering isn't a problem. Yes, it's a little different from stereo but it's still just as crucial of a step and the same things can still be accomplished. It just takes a little longer. Checking the translation to all of the various formats and optimizing them is one of the steps for mastering Atmos. It can be done. I know a few mixing engineers who have "reverse engineered" what Spatial Audio does so that they can make it not completely mess up their mixes compared to stereo.

The only real limitation compared to stereo is the lack of ability to (without complex workarounds) limit a mix. Having said that, it's not really an issue considering the loudness specs. There's no need for limiting the entire mix. If you need more of "that" sound you can still achieve it with working on the objects and beds.

I only master atmos. I don't mix in atmos (aside from just playing around with it). Everyone I've worked with so far mixed on headphones and their mixes all translated quite well from what they heard in binaural into speakers. The only problem has been that "poor" panning choices (like putting a lead singer in the back) doesn't sound as bad on headphones (improved HRTF support should help with that). As far as I know, other mastering engineers offering atmos services like Dale Becker are working just as well with mastering atmos.

Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are still a lot of problems in the Atmos ecosystem but once they're sorted out (hopefully!) then Atmos will be the way of the future. The general workflow process will end up being the same as it is today for stereo. On one end of the spectrum you'll have people doing everything in their bedroom on headphones. On the other you'll have the full tracking - mixing - mastering process handled by separate engineers (each with full speakers systems) and studios.


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## wunderflo (Nov 26, 2021)

Thank you so much for your replies! Very exciting and insightful. Great idea to help headphone-mixers this way, @Gerhard Westphalen. I also understand your reservations, @Dietz . Not having a mixbus / limiter on the sum feels scary! FabFilter Pro-L 2 says that it supports Atmos. What does that mean then in this context?

Yes, I know it's all far from ideal - especially on Windows. Can be very frustrating, but also tons of fun. That's why I wrote, my expectations wouldn't be too high. Still, I'd love to already start experimenting with it - to be ready when the technology is more mature. Given the streaming services investing a lot of money in it, I'm optimistic that Atmos is here to stay. Just needs to become more accessible to the bedroom producers/mixers and more standardized on the decoding/rendering side (Tidal interpreting the data differently from Apple Music etc.). I'm sure it was the same when stereo or the CD was developed (except I didn't have a chance to be part of that  ). 

On the other hand, mixing in stereo you also can't know what it will sound like on the consumer side. The difference is that with stereo we agreed on an ideal listening situation (linear frequency response, etc.). When it sounded good under these circumstances, we were able to say: "Listen, I did a good job. If it sounds bad on your side now, it's your fault" (I'm exaggerating). With Atmos that's not clear at all. Is 7.1.4 ideal when 99% of listeners will only be able to enjoy "surround" on headphones? Is the Tidal decoder the correct one when Apple uses a different one and has more listeners? 

Meanwhile, I tested the Nuendo demo, threw in a few raw stereo tracks (splitted into mono) from some old project and set up the routing for the internal Atmos rendering. To my surprise, it worked! I feel like I created a piece of virtual reality, meaning I feel like God! 

I was able to pan stuff in 3D and listen to some form of binaural version of that on my headphones. Didn't sound that bad.

Adjusting the binaural rendering mode settings for the objects (near, mid, far) didn't have any effect, though. Is this what you mean, when you say that creating binaural mixes on Windows is not possible, @Gerhard Westphalen ? That's what confuses me, because it was possible to create a binaural downmix? Also, I don't really understand the purpose of these settings. Why can't we simply continue to create this effect of something being further away in the traditional way (EQ, reverb, volume, etc.) and ignore these settings? Apple Music ignores them, anyway?

Next to this, I'd like to understand whether the main problem with Atmos mixing on Windows-Nuendo is the real-time binaural auditioning being too bad to know what you're doing, or the actual export of the ADM? From what I understood, the difference to the DAPS ADM export is not that big (it can store the same information), but somehow not all the binaural information can be auditioned in real time? Can any third party plugins help with that? Penteo 16 Pro+ can create binaural downmixes, for example. And the New Audio Technology Spatial Audio Designer (NAT SAD) seems to be an alternative to the whole Nuendo/DAPS-system?

Thanks again! Love exploring these new possibilities.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Nov 26, 2021)

wunderflo said:


> FabFilter Pro-L 2 says that it supports Atmos. What does that mean then in this context?


It supports up to the 7.1.2 channel beds. Not a master buss.



wunderflo said:


> Is 7.1.4 ideal when 99% of listeners will only be able to enjoy "surround" on headphones?


7.1.4 is just as important as the binarual. In a properly set up listening environment the differences aren't that big. Not really any different than the "ideal" stereo except for with Spatial Audio which I'll mention below...


wunderflo said:


> Is the Tidal decoder the correct one when Apple uses a different one and has more listeners?


Tidal plays back the binaural. Apple creates its own version based on a channel based downmix. Very different from binaural. Plus they add their own extra processing. The only way to audition it before it's released is playing an MP4 on an iphone. I believe they did this because they're developing their own sort of ecosystem for it which extends beyond just playing back a binarual file. I've heard that they also don't want to stay too attached to Dolby in case they decide to part ways. They're essentially developing their own version of Atmos.



wunderflo said:


> Adjusting the binaural rendering mode settings for the objects (near, mid, far) didn't have any effect, though.


That's because you're listening to an ambisonics binaural. Has nothing to do with the Atmos binaural. Right now there's no way to audition or export the Atmos binaural using Nuendo with the internal renderer. Those settings just get baked into the ADM for when it's played on a system that has binaural rendering.



wunderflo said:


> Is this what you mean, when you say that creating binaural mixes on Windows is not possible


It's possible if you run DAMS either "offline" (export ADM from Nuendo and open in DAMS) or have the hardware to monitor through DAMS (ideally 128 channels between them). If you're on a Mac then you just need DAPS and the audio bridge (same setup as with PT).



wunderflo said:


> Why can't we simply continue to create this effect of something being further away in the traditional way (EQ, reverb, volume, etc.) and ignore these settings?


Because listening on speakers doesn't entirely translate to binaural. The binaural settings give you more flexibility to change depth in the binaural without having to mess with the full speaker version. You need some way to tweak one independently from the other. This is where Dolby can/should introduce more flexibility.



wunderflo said:


> Apple Music ignores them, anyway?


Yes since they create the Spatial Audio from a channel based mix. They ignore the binaural. Considering the Apple can change their processing at any time, IMO it's not worth trying to get the Spatial Audio to sound great (and sacrifice the other versions as a result). Check the it's OK and move on. The binaural is what most other services will probably use.

One of the big problems is bandwidth. We just don't have the internet speeds to stream uncompressed Atmos (you can do the math on 128 channels at 48kHz...). It ends up being very compressed and so most of the time sounds like a crappy MP3. With binarual you only have to stream a stereo file so you can have lossless Atmos in the binaural format.



wunderflo said:


> Next to this, I'd like to understand whether the main problem with Atmos mixing on Windows-Nuendo is the real-time binaural auditioning being too bad to know what you're doing, or the actual export of the ADM? From what I understood, the difference to the DAPS ADM export is not that big (it can store the same information), but somehow not all the binaural information can be auditioned in real time? Can any third party plugins help with that? Penteo 16 Pro+ can create binaural downmixes, for example. And the New Audio Technology Spatial Audio Designer (NAT SAD) seems to be an alternative to the whole Nuendo/DAPS-system?


The Atmos binaural is different from any other binaural. Working on one likely won't translate into the other. If you want to work in Atmos you need to be able to monitor Atmos. If you just want to work with 3D audio then by all means use the ambisonics binaural. The only problem is that if you wanted to release that as anything except a headphone-only binaural version, Atmos is your only real option and trying to translate your entire project into an Atmos format would probably be a mess. The best option in that case would probably be to just downmix into a single bed. Then you'd just need someone to help you check the final Atmos files before release. I guess that could work.


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## wunderflo (Nov 26, 2021)

wow, you are very kind and knowledgeable. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my beginners questions! I haven't found such clear, detailed yet easy to understand answers anywhere else before on this topic. Now it makes much more sense. Let's just hope, the next version of Nuendo will somehow include the Atmos binaural rendering or Dolby will release DAPS on Windows. Really such a pity. I'm assuming investing in Peteo 16 Pro+ won't help neither. Out of curiosity I'm going to test their demo nevertheless and report back here.


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## Ruffian Price (Dec 2, 2021)

If you're fine working with just the bed, you can run the Renderer on Windows and route a different virtual soundcard with at least 16 channels to it, it's the Music Panner and the Audio Bridge virtual driver that only work on Mac.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Dec 2, 2021)

Ruffian Price said:


> If you're fine working with just the bed, you can run the Renderer on Windows and route a different virtual soundcard with at least 16 channels to it, it's the Music Panner and the Audio Bridge virtual driver that only work on Mac.


Only if you buys DAMS. DAPS will not start up on Windows. The installer is the same. It's just the ilok license that changes the features available. On Macs either license will work when you open the renderer. On Windows it will not start if you only have a DAPS license. 

Again, just an arbitrary limitation set by Dolby. The only reason they don't make DAPS available for Windows is the audio bridge (which will never exist on Windows). DAMS only runs on Windows because of hardware RMU users. Dolby doesn't care to support any other Windows users. 

Supposedly it's because it requires too much processing power and they can't guarantee that any PC will handle it. At the same time, people run DAPS on crappy Macbooks without any issues...


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## IFM (Dec 7, 2021)

I've been toying with the idea of crossgrading one of my Cubase licenses to Nuendo while it's on sale mainly to give the Atmos stuff a try. However, if I really wanted to mix for Atmos to be released as Binaural in Apple Music I already have Logic. I just do like some of the cool things Nuendo can do but feel like I'd never actually used those features. 🤔


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## ryst (Dec 8, 2021)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I'd argue the opposite. You make a stereo mix and are stuck with how it sounds everywhere. Speakers, headphones, earbuds, phone speakers, car, etc. With Atmos you can optimize it for all of those formats and simultaneously have all of the possibilities of surround added in. The tools just don't give enough flexibility yet.
> 
> Mastering isn't a problem. Yes, it's a little different from stereo but it's still just as crucial of a step and the same things can still be accomplished. It just takes a little longer. Checking the translation to all of the various formats and optimizing them is one of the steps for mastering Atmos. It can be done. I know a few mixing engineers who have "reverse engineered" what Spatial Audio does so that they can make it not completely mess up their mixes compared to stereo.
> 
> ...


Interesting. Are you getting 5.1 and 7.1 mixes as well that were mixed in Headphones? If so, do you know what your clients are using?

I'm doing my first 5.1 mixes right now in the new Alan Meyerson plugin. I'm also testing Waves Abbey Road Studio, dearVR Monitor, and Waves NX. They all sound different. Just curious what most of your clients are using.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Dec 8, 2021)

ryst said:


> Interesting. Are you getting 5.1 and 7.1 mixes as well that were mixed in Headphones? If so, do you know what your clients are using?
> 
> I'm doing my first 5.1 mixes right now in the new Alan Meyerson plugin. I'm also testing Waves Abbey Road Studio, dearVR Monitor, and Waves NX. They all sound different. Just curious what most of your clients are using.


Not really. For the bit of work that I do as a scoring mixer, composers are either in stereo or in 5.1 with speakers.

I've only had Atmos projects as a mastering engineer (which is what I mainly do nowadays) and in all of the cases so far they were mixed on headphones. 

As far as I can see, there's still a lot of separation between the usual 5.1 for scoring work and Atmos for music. None of the composers I work with are working in Atmos. That's usually handled later on in the chain except for larger budget projects. I'm sure that'll change soon as Atmos becomes more accessible.


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## wunderflo (Dec 8, 2021)

thanks everyone for your replies so far.

I just wanted to give a feedback on the binaural monitoring/downmixing plugins I tested so far.
However, please keep in mind that I'm new to this. So *maybe I was just using some of them wrong*. Plus, I have *no comparison to what the real Dolby Atmos renderer sounds like*, and the binaural experience is super subjective, anyways. So yea... this is probably pretty useless and *needs to be taken with a grain (a ton?) of salt*.

I have to say, the integrated Nuendo "Atmos" tools (the panner, "Dolby Atmos renderer" and Anymix) are quite nice, despite the criticism that they are not useful to get an impression of what your mix will sound like when published on Tidal, for example (which to many might make them completely useless). To me, they sound "good", though - for whatever that's worth. At least they offer a lot of bang for the buck, as they try to replace DAPS (300$) and an upmixing tool such as Nugen Halo 3D or Penteo 16 Pro+ (both around 600$). Also, they could be used to monitor and create a purely binaural stereo downmix that can only be listened to on headphones as well as the normal non-binaural stereo downmix. That's not really what I was going for, but still... it's interesting and fun. Good enough for free tracks that you send to your friends for fun.

The binaural of Penteo 16 Pro+ sounds a bit "better" to my ears (I'd describe it as more transparent, easier to locate the sound sources, rear speakers seem to be a bit more dominant, while in the Nuendo binaural I experienced a more drastic dip in volume when moving sounds to the back). Is it closer to the "real deal"? No idea. The binaural object settings obviously also don't translate, as that's a limitation of Nuendo (that hopefully will get fixed). The GUI/UX is fantastic and its upmixing capability is extremely good. Not worth 600 bucks for me atm, though.

Would be super helpful and I'd be forever grateful if someone could post a comparison between the DAPS binaural and a Nuendo or Penteo binaural downmix (with all object settings on mid).

Obviously, not being able to audition the "correct" Dolby Atmos binaural remains a huge problem. Therefore, the way Steinberg (and Dolby, as it seems to be licensed/approved by them?) are selling this Nuendo feature, is quite misleading or at least confusing imo. I'm surprised this didn't cause more uproar. They clearly promise something else or am I just misunderstanding their marketing materials?

dearVR Monitor is different, as it doesn't try to imitate the Dolby Atmos binaural, but instead tries to simulate being in a room with a surround speaker setup. To me, that simply offers another completely different perspective, and it can never hurt to listen to your mix from multiple perspectives. Bought it.

The Immerse AmbiDecoder (where you take a photo of your ear to create a custom HRTF profile) didn't work for me at all.

The New Audio Technology Spatial Audio Designer delivered a sonically very interesting result - completely different from all the other tools, as it bypasses the DAW "routing", and can be used with many DAWs that don't support Atmos (Cubase, etc.). It felt most spatial/3dimensional to me. However, it also colored the sound a lot - not necessarily in a bad way, though. To me, it's more an effect that'd be nice to use for certain elements within an Atmos mix. Yet, I imagine, that would result in a workflow nightmare. The interface is also very hard (almost impossible) to read on a 4k monitor. Didn't buy it, but I'll keep it on my radar.

dearVR AmbiMicro (free), Binauralizer Studio or AmbiHead HD (all the tools that had to be used on an Ambisonics 3rd order bus) all sounded horrible to me - just in terms of sound quality. Kinda sounded like listening to a super compressed mp3. Maybe I was doing something wrong.

As I have nothing to lose, out of curiosity, I'm going to create an Atmos mix with the tools I have at my disposal (Nuendo and dearVR Pro + Monitor), and then either pay someone to render a binaural version with DAPS or simply publish it on Tidal and record the Tidal version, so we can compare. This will still take a long time, though.  Didn't feel comfortable with posting audio examples of my experiments described here, as maybe I used some of these tools completely wrong, and didn't want to give wrong impressions of what they sound like.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Dec 8, 2021)

wunderflo said:


> They clearly promise something else or am I just misunderstanding their marketing materials?


Yes, pretty much. They never clearly state that you can't monitor the Atmos binaural. You have to go through the manual and tutorial videos to figure out that the Atmos and binaural don't overlap.



wunderflo said:


> As I have nothing to lose, out of curiosity, I'm going to create an Atmos mix with the tools I have at my disposal (Nuendo and dearVR Pro + Monitor), and then either pay someone to render a binaural version with DAPS or simply publish it on Tidal and record the Tidal version, so we can compare. This will still take a long time, though.  Didn't feel comfortable with posting audio examples of my experiments described here, as maybe I used some of these tools completely wrong, and didn't want to give wrong impressions of what they sound like.


I'd be happy to run it through.


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## timbit2006 (Dec 8, 2021)

Dietz said:


> _What’s more - how is a mastering engineer supposed to deal with dozens of moving “Objects”, when there is no actual “mix bus” anymore? The methods we tried-and-tested for more than half a century now are not applicable any longer._


There are multichannel plugins for this. Melda is fully Ambisonic now and FLUX/IRCAM has always been like that for multichannel bus mixing.

@Gerhard Westphalen
I noticed you're located in Calgary, do you know of any good Canadian schools that will teach more about mastering in Dolby Atmos? I have more than enough experience to do it and I'm working on making a multichannel monitoring setup currently for this purpose but of course the pro level certification might be worth my time in the long run. I've been thinking of going to University of Victoria since they have a dedicated audio acoustics program. Do you have any advice in this area?


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## Dietz (Dec 9, 2021)

timbit2006 said:


> There are multichannel plugins for this. Melda is fully Ambisonic now and FLUX/IRCAM has always been like that for multichannel bus mixing.


Might be that we're not talking about the same issue.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Dec 9, 2021)

timbit2006 said:


> I noticed you're located in Calgary, do you know of any good Canadian schools that will teach more about mastering in Dolby Atmos? I have more than enough experience to do it and I'm working on making a multichannel monitoring setup currently for this purpose but of course the pro level certification might be worth my time in the long run. I've been thinking of going to University of Victoria since they have a dedicated audio acoustics program. Do you have any advice in this area?


You're not going to learn this at any University (trust me, I have 2 music degrees in this field...). Your options are to either struggle on your own (and arguably never really learn these things to the fullest), assist/intern at a studio where you can see these things in action, or find someone willing to mentor you (or at least give lessons).

I considered the programs in Victoria but ultimately they're very basic. 1 or 2 classes in acoustics isn't going to teach you much beyond what you can find in all of the standard acoustics textbooks. There's much much more to learn if you want to be a professional practicing these things.

Keep in mind that mastering Atmos is nothing more than applying a mastering mindset to the Atmos workflow. If you learn about those things separately, you should have no problem putting them together. The only potential challenge is figuring out workflow both in terms of setting up your studio to handle it and the way that you interface with clients etc.


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## ryst (Dec 9, 2021)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Not really. For the bit of work that I do as a scoring mixer, composers are either in stereo or in 5.1 with speakers.
> 
> I've only had Atmos projects as a mastering engineer (which is what I mainly do nowadays) and in all of the cases so far they were mixed on headphones.
> 
> As far as I can see, there's still a lot of separation between the usual 5.1 for scoring work and Atmos for music. None of the composers I work with are working in Atmos. That's usually handled later on in the chain except for larger budget projects. I'm sure that'll change soon as Atmos becomes more accessible.


Interesting. For the people mixing in Atmos in headphones, do you have any idea what emulation plugin they are generally using?


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## ryst (Dec 9, 2021)

wunderflo said:


> thanks everyone for your replies so far.
> 
> I just wanted to give a feedback on the binaural monitoring/downmixing plugins I tested so far.
> However, please keep in mind that I'm new to this. So *maybe I was just using some of them wrong*. Plus, I have *no comparison to what the real Dolby Atmos renderer sounds like*, and the binaural experience is super subjective, anyways. So yea... this is probably pretty useless and *needs to be taken with a grain (a ton?) of salt*.
> ...


Although I'm mainly getting into 5.1 mixing for film, I'm certInly interested in Dolby Atmos as well. Right now, I have tried dearVR MONITOR, Alan Meyerson immerse and Spatial Audio Designer for 5.1 only. I've also tried Waves NX and Abbey Road but niether of them do Dolby Atmos. And I do think that SAD sounds best and more "realistic" in headphones. But the Alan Meyerson plugin works very well too. Regarding upmixing, I haven't tried Penteo yet, but I do have Nugen Halo which I think works great.


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## CSS_SCC (Dec 9, 2021)

Some notes since I have been trying to get at least a taste of what creating surround music will be like as I already have a 5.1 speaker setup and a Focusrite 18i20 to play with.

1. I have bought a guide from here to have a more in depth understanding of what is what: https://dingdingmusic.com/-titles-/dolby-atmos-1.html

2. I have been trying to get Windows to support proper multichannel and it's a nightmare. I have bought both DTS Unbound and Dolby Atmos from the Windows store and both require you to be logged into the Microsoft Store anytime you want to use them -> got a refund as I don't agree with beeing monitored each time I want to listen to anything on my computer - plus, for upmix/downmix it requires an AV receiver and connecting my 5.1 setup to both my interface and an AVR without something like SPL SMC 7.1 is a nightmare as most of 5.1 and 7.1 monitoring solutions don't have the option to route a mono sum to the LFE channel (https://spl.audio/en/spl-produkt/smc-7-1/).

3. It's a little bit more hassle initially for setting up, but for the moment I am using VoiceMeeter (http://www.vb-audio.com/) as it allows me to still use ASIO but also to upmix, downmix any audio source from my computer ( and  - the second is in Spanish but it's easy to follow along).

4. If you want to go further and have proper room correction, one solution would be Dirac Live Room Correction Suite https://www.dirac.com/live/studio-audio-for-creatives/ or just for eye candy look at Trinnov. For mastering, there is the Mastering tools plugin from RTW.com

5. There is another option from New Audio Technology that includes Spatial Audio Designer (SAD) and Spatial Sound Card Pro (SSC Pro) – Virtual Sound Card (https://newaudiotechnology.com/products/compare/)

6. NuGen but you already found those.

7. Reverb plugin LiquidSonics has a few plugins that support up to 7.1.6 channel configurations.

This is for the moment, I had more but I need to find on which phone, computer, tablet I have saved all the bookmarks...


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Dec 9, 2021)

ryst said:


> Interesting. For the people mixing in Atmos in headphones, do you have any idea what emulation plugin they are generally using?


You shouldn't be using any emulation plugin. You need to be listening to the Dolby binaural. I'm baffled by how companies are getting away with making this so unclear. Even Acustica's new release for Atmos. Claiming that you can now monitor in binaural. Not even close. Has nothing to do with the Dolby binaural.


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## ryst (Dec 13, 2021)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> You shouldn't be using any emulation plugin. You need to be listening to the Dolby binaural. I'm baffled by how companies are getting away with making this so unclear. Even Acustica's new release for Atmos. Claiming that you can now monitor in binaural. Not even close. Has nothing to do with the Dolby binaural.


Gotcha (_I think_). So if I'm understanding you correctly, and please forgive me for my ignorance as I'm still getting my heard wrapped around all this, I would simply use the Dolby Binaural setting in the Dolby Atmos Renderer to monitor in headphones, correct?

If the answer is yes, then what exactly are plugins like Acustica's new plugin doing and/or what are they useful for if they have nothing to do with the Dolby binaural? This is all quite fascinating.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Dec 13, 2021)

ryst said:


> I would simply use the Dolby Binaural setting in the Dolby Atmos Renderer to monitor in headphones, correct?


Yes



ryst said:


> If the answer is yes, then what exactly are plugins like Acustica's new plugin doing and/or what are they useful for if they have nothing to do with the Dolby binaural? This is all quite fascinating.


They're trying to provide a room emulation. Hearing what it would sound like in a room with speakers. The Dolby binaural is more of a "dry" emulation of surround on headphones. I'm not sure how useful programs like the Acustica really are. If I didn't have a full speaker system, would it really give me anything meaningful that I wouldn't be getting from the Binaural? Really what you're getting is the all of the problems from those rooms. The Dolby binaural is probably already a pretty good approximation of "real" speakers surrounding you.


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## ryst (Dec 14, 2021)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Yes
> 
> 
> They're trying to provide a room emulation. Hearing what it would sound like in a room with speakers. The Dolby binaural is more of a "dry" emulation of surround on headphones. I'm not sure how useful programs like the Acustica really are. If I didn't have a full speaker system, would it really give me anything meaningful that I wouldn't be getting from the Binaural? Really what you're getting is the all of the problems from those rooms. The Dolby binaural is probably already a pretty good approximation of "real" speakers surrounding you.


Got it. Thanks for helping me understand this stuff.


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