Atmos Production Suite: Bugs or expected behavior?

[Michael Carnes]

Hi folks,
I've recently begun some experiments with the Atmos Production Suite (software renderer). As far as I can tell, I'm fully up-to-date with V3.0.2 of the renderer and PT 2019.5. I'm bumping into some behaviors I didn't expect and I think it's wrong. Whether to attribute this to Dolby or Avid is another question. For now, I'm just trying to determine if this is known.

The most obvious issue is that track mute doesn't appear to work when a track is assigned to an object. I do know the tracks are properly attached to objects: they show up in the Dolby monitor, pan properly and so on. If they're in the bed, mutes work. As soon as they become objects, the mute doesn't work.

The second issue is that sends (reverb, fx sends, etc) don't seem to work when a track is attached to an object. Again, if it goes to the bed the audio goes to the aux sends and is picked up by aux inputs. But when the track is attached to an object the send dries right up.

Does this ring any bells anywhere?

[Michael Carnes]

Dang! Found the answer deep in a Dolby forum. The Atmos send is pre-everything, so nothing else in the track (plugs, sends, etc) is part of the chain. I can work around it, but it sure makes things more 'interesting'

[paulo m]

To a certain extent, I can accept the Sends issue, but plugins inserted on a track that is an object is out of my understanding...

I guess that unless you have a RMU (and pay the ripoff price for it), things are not easy as they should be...

[Michael Carnes]

Originally Posted by paulo m

To a certain extent, I can accept the Sends issue, but plugins inserted on a track that is an object is out of my understanding...

I guess that unless you have a RMU (and pay the ripoff price for it), things are not easy as they should be...

I'm working through it. By all appearances, the render send plugin causes everything in the channel to head straight to the renderer. The order of plugins in the channel doesn't seem to make any difference.

I'm coming up with a workflow that's starting to make some sense. For each channel, it requires one extra bus and two aux channels (details later on if anybody's interested. But some of it has to do with my notions of accurate reverb). I'm really glad the old restrictions on bus and aux counts have gone away.

[reichman]

Hello Exponential:

Something is wrong with your setup. You can definitely use plug-ins and sends on object tracks. Seems to me like you might be putting the Dolby Atmos sends on the audio track. They're not meant to be there. Check out the Dolby templates. The intended design is to use audio tracks that route to mono auxes that have the sends there. These auxes have Pro Tools outputs that go nowhere because the send is delivering to the Renderer. In object mode, sound flows to the aux. In bed mode, sound goes to a 7.1.2 aux with a send to the first ten inputs.

And, the above paragraph refers to the Send/Return mode in DAPS. See my other thread about this mode vs. Dolby Audio Bridge.