Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Hi all,
I'm currently setting up a pre mix Atmos room and a couple of issues have come to mind that I'm hoping some Atmos whiz may be able to help me with.


Question 1:

7.1.4 seems to be the sweet spot for Atmos in a small room, 4 overheads that you can pan through, or set up as a bed would seem to make sense.
What confuses me is, why is the maximum track width for a bed only 7.1.2?? How can you use your 4 height speakers effectively if you can only access them as .2 in a bed?


I realise you can use Object tracks to send stuff to them, or pan across them, but it just makes sense to me to have beds laid out in pairs of tracks across the side, rear and top soundfield, surely that makes it more immersive?
Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me?


Question 2:


How do people handle deliverables with Atmos?
For instance DME deliverables and with some companies asking for seperate Foley Stems etc too, how do you make that work

when using objects? Do you have to do a separate pass for each of the food groups and mute stuff accordingly, or does the Dolby renderer have some clever way of dealing with it?



Thanks
Martin

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Q1. As you said, you use objects.
Q2. The RMU is just a 128 track multitrack. So for a stems delivery you can fill it up with what ever you like. So any combination and width of beds / stems and objects depending on what you need to deliver. You then assign each bed and it’s associated objects to a “group” in the RMU which you can name yourself. So DX, CX,MX etc.
For a Printmaster you would route everything to just one bed and along with all your objects assign them to one printmaster group in the RMU.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Thanks Richard, that sounds promising re the RMU and deliverables.


How do you use seperate reverbs and fx for DX,MX,FX etc? I'm confused how that fits in with using objects when there are no bus's at the end of the chain.



I still think a 7.1.4 or 7.0.4 track width in PT would be useful. I just read a piece where Michael Carnes from Exponential was saying something similar, about needing 4 overheads at least in a bed to get real immersion.
Maybe I should re-think using beds at all and just use everything as objects? I suppose there's no right and wrong way with Atmos, as with all mixing, if it sounds good, it is good.:-)

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Question 1:

7.1.4 seems to be the sweet spot for Atmos in a small room, 4 overheads that you can pan through, or set up as a bed would seem to make sense.
What confuses me is, why is the maximum track width for a bed only 7.1.2?? How can you use your 4 height speakers effectively if you can only access them as .2 in a bed?

Most people I know are not using the .2 in the bed and opting for 7.1 beds only instead. In large sessions, this allows for more objects. The objects can be placed with much better precision than the bed overheads.




Question 2:


How do people handle deliverables with Atmos?
For instance DME deliverables and with some companies asking for separate Foley Stems etc too, how do you make that work

when using objects? Do you have to do a separate pass for each of the food groups and mute stuff accordingly, or does the Dolby renderer have some clever way of dealing with it?


The rendered has a clever way of dealing with this. In the RMU you are able to define each group (Bed and corresponding objects) as one of the food groups (Dx, Loop, Music, etc). You can also combine multiple groups for a re-render if needed. You are able to define re-render groups in just about any width configuration you would want (2.0 - 7.1.2). Depending on how you are working, you can just have the RMU deal with the first set of fold downs and have your stem recorder do the rest. Another option is to record a DAFP or ADM .WAV and have the RMU do a series of offline bounces. You can do as many of those as you want, you just have to define them.

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Surround channels in "bed" are configured in stereo pairs: Lss-Rss (side); Lsr-Rsr (rear) and LT-RT which stands for Left Top - Right Top.
That means that in 7.1.2 configuration you can pan to the whole row of top channels only, not individual speakers. To access individual speakers, you use objects.
Hope this helps

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Thanks guys.


Branko: so I see the +2 is more of an array, like surrounds in 5.1, or the top channel in Auro 3D?


Randall: Using 7.1 beds and objects for height makes a lot of sense, thanks for that.
I see so the RMU can do all the Deliverables work and its just a slight mind shift in that there are no longer 'stems' as such, but groups of tracks related to DX FX MX. The drawback I see there is, you can't limit or compress the groups. Or at least you can put a limiter over the beds, but not the objects.


Also, am I right in thinking it would probably be better to have seperate reverbs for 7.1 and the height channels rather than dedicated 7.1.2 reverbs?

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

I have found that I will have a bed reverb and an object reverb. I usually use one or the other, sometimes both. The object reverb is more flexible, but takes longer to set up.

I will say that as far as reverb in the heights/objects goes - less is more. I have run into situations where fold downs, especially to stereo, are problematic when there is too much reverb in the heights.

Randall

Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

This is definitely an issue when you are trying to hit a Home Entertainment spec. I’ve been told that it something Dolby are working on. At the moment I am using some ‘keyed’ compression on beds and objects either inside protools or from stem re-renders.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Exactly. If you send a static ambience to this channel, it will sound almost as mono. That's the reason why a lot of mixers avoid that approach.

Re: Dolby Atmos Questions?
 

Interesting stuff and great to hear how others are using Atmos!


Randall do you have different object and Bed reverbs for DX FX and MX.
Is there any benefit to automate a reverb between bed and object?
I would love to have automatable routings for all channels which would allow you to use less FX channels to cover all stem groups. I think Avid feels this is too complicated, but it would be massively liberating. They've kind of teased us with the possibilities in allowing routing between beds and objects to be automated,why not go the whole way?



It seems like Dolby could implement some kind of multichannel Atmos version of their 'Container' within the RMU. I used to really like what the Container did on LtRt.


That's why I felt the minimum level of 4 height speakers works better. Its like having quad over 7.1. Similar to the way Auro has 2 5.0 layers.