New Atmos-Capable DAW: Fiedler Audio Dolby Atmos Composer

[humprof]

First third of the review is in front of the paywall. Currently on sale for 180 bucks:
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/fiedler-audio-dolby-atmos-composer

 

[jimfisheye]

Of course you can already use any DAW to mix in Atmos.

But if you want to use object elements and deliver them to the Atmos master that way, you need the Dolby renderer to put your 7.1.4 (and any object elements baked into it beyond the height channels - which are mandatory objects) into the Atmos file format.

So full DAW apps with this integrated might be welcome! It will likely become a stock thing before too long. But you can still just use your favorite DAW and make however many channel multichannel mixes you please.

The stock joystick panner plugins in Reaper are sure comprehensive!

That screen shot looks like Dolby licensed their Atmos renderer app to them and they made a subset of it or something. $180 vs $300 for the renderer. Wonder what feature they pulled out?

 

[anibal]

I find this related video very enlightening:

 

[jimfisheye]

Some random mix thoughts.

I wonder if there are any music mixes that used objects beyond the height speakers? The system forces you to define 7.1 bed vs objects. So you make the height speakers objects and pan them to the hard default spots. Your mix comes out as expected. So the only element that will scale to different speaker arrays in most music mixes will be the height channels alone. The 7.1 bed is static.

Film vs music does have different goals. Not to add to the film vs audio divide or attribute write or wrong to anything. Film needs dialog to come across, dialog to come across, dialog to come across, and then cinematic folly fx to be on point. Natural and not gimmicky sounding and in the right spots on the sound stage. (This can require some advanced mixing chops that some audio only guys don't have, mind you!)

Music wants to make the instruments and sound elements as clear as possible. As full fidelity as possible. Usually hyper-realistic. And with the ability to be delivered by sometimes below average sound systems. For an example of that thinking, a kick drum is not placed 4" to the right to precisely image it how it was placed in the recording room. It's mixed in mono to both front speakers to couple those speakers together and make it easiest for any system to make a kick drum sound.

There are old school moves all over mixes and then maybe a few cinematic effects that can get away with only being heard in full on a full system. Any cinematic mix element could use the object system to advantage. It just doesn't apply for the old school mix elements. And of course that's what the bed tracks are for.

At the end of the day, a 7.1.4 mix can be delivered 1:1 to a consumer's 7.1.4 speaker system. Or it can be downmixed to stereo by the Atmos binaural system to sound like an actual proper accomplished stereo mix that used binaural elements.

I imagine someone will try to make a surround mix while only listening in binaural in headphones with the Atmos system. Then play the game of "What does the mix sound like on different large speaker arrays?" That seems like it would be a more niche weird thing to do. Like something the Flaming Lips might do. I suspect most people are going to continue to mix on their preferred speaker systems. 7.1.4 has landed as a reference point for that.

 

[anibal]

There are definitely some mixers using objects for ear-level sounds, not only heights. Steven Wilson and Bruce Soord are some common mainstream examples. I have also heard a "quadraphonic" mix using objects in Atmos: the source was a quad synth and each channel was mapped as an object and put in the imaginary corners of the soundstage, so you would hear the back corners in the rears in a 7.x.x system and in the sides in a 5.x.x system.
I see the 7.1 or 5.1 bed as backwards compatibility feature, it makes sense to use all objects also for music.

Some random mix thoughts.

I wonder if there are any music mixes that used objects beyond the height speakers? The system forces you to define 7.1 bed vs objects. So you make the height speakers objects and pan them to the hard default spots. Your mix comes out as expected. So the only element that will scale to different speaker arrays in most music mixes will be the height channels alone. The 7.1 bed is static.

Film vs music does have different goals. Not to add to the film vs audio divide or attribute write or wrong to anything. Film needs dialog to come across, dialog to come across, dialog to come across, and then cinematic folly fx to be on point. Natural and not gimmicky sounding and in the right spots on the sound stage. (This can require some advanced mixing chops that some audio only guys don't have, mind you!)

Music wants to make the instruments and sound elements as clear as possible. As full fidelity as possible. Usually hyper-realistic. And with the ability to be delivered by sometimes below average sound systems. For an example of that thinking, a kick drum is not placed 4" to the right to precisely image it how it was placed in the recording room. It's mixed in mono to both front speakers to couple those speakers together and make it easiest for any system to make a kick drum sound.

There are old school moves all over mixes and then maybe a few cinematic effects that can get away with only being heard in full on a full system. Any cinematic mix element could use the object system to advantage. It just doesn't apply for the old school mix elements. And of course that's what the bed tracks are for.

At the end of the day, a 7.1.4 mix can be delivered 1:1 to a consumer's 7.1.4 speaker system. Or it can be downmixed to stereo by the Atmos binaural system to sound like an actual proper accomplished stereo mix that used binaural elements.

I imagine someone will try to make a surround mix while only listening in binaural in headphones with the Atmos system. Then play the game of "What does the mix sound like on different large speaker arrays?" That seems like it would be a more niche weird thing to do. Like something the Flaming Lips might do. I suspect most people are going to continue to mix on their preferred speaker systems. 7.1.4 has landed as a reference point for that.

 

[sjcorne]

I wonder if there are any music mixes that used objects beyond the height speakers?

You actually don't even need to use objects to access the height speakers, as beds go up to 7.1.2 configuration - but there are certain positions you can't pan to (front or rear heights only, the wides, etc) without using objects. Some Atmos mixes are composed almost exclusively of objects (though the LFE channel has to be part of the bed), yet others only use the bed and no objects.

I imagine someone will try to make a surround mix while only listening in binaural in headphones with the Atmos system. Then play the game of "What does the mix sound like on different large speaker arrays?" That seems like it would be a more niche weird thing to do. Like something the Flaming Lips might do. I suspect most people are going to continue to mix on their preferred speaker systems. 7.1.4 has landed as a reference point for that.

Most of the mixers I've spoken to start with the speaker mix, then try to adapt it for headphone playback after-the-fact using the binaural metadata tags and other tools in the Dolby suite. Trying to make it work on different-sized speaker arrays is usually a distant third consideration after those two.

 

[jimfisheye]

Any examples? One of the engineers would have had to talk about it to know of course.

You're still mixing in some room with speakers. The mix is made on that array regardless of mix method and tools used. The idea is it sounds 100% intentional and 1:1 on the very same speaker array in a different room. But it maybe sounds better on a different setup - larger or smaller - than previous systems.

Anyway it looks like fun to be able to dial in the metadata and make mixes translate to other systems better. My first thought was finally genuine single inventory mixes that a consumer can't screw up! My 2nd thought is look how they're making it rely on hardware units and that whole angle. My next thoughts are consumed with Dolby refusing to even sell the encoder to the likes of me. My final thought is that negative stuff will be short lived while delivery of 128 channels of audio and 7.1.4 mixes and all will be forever.

 

[HomerJAU]

Of course you can already use any DAW to mix in Atmos.

But if you want to use object elements and deliver them to the Atmos master that way, you need the Dolby renderer to put your 7.1.4

Steinberg Cubase does not need the Dolby Renderer. Free trial and special pricing for upgrades from other DAWs makes it ‘affordable’

 

[jimfisheye]

Yeah it's already starting! Hopefully Reaper picks up on it soon too.

 

[martin russell]

I tried this shortly after it was launched. Using Logic in Atmos mode imposes quite a load on the CPU without playing anything, so I thought it would be a better way to go...features-wise it was way more versatile, the CPU hit was significantly less, and I had high hopes for it but all I could get out of it was stuttering nonsense and the support was woeful. YMMV

I'm caught in the buying-a-new-computer-means-buying-new-audio-interfaces loop (none of mine will work nicely with the M or silicon Macs). Currently contemplating buying a maxed-out trashcan Mac which will run Monterey and still do firewire via Thunderbolt 2. Will give the Fiedler software another go when I have that...

 

[anibal]

I guess you may already know this, but Fiedler Audio made the Composer Essential free (free as in beer).

I had quite some fun doing some Portishead upmixes in Reaper, from stems extracted using IZotope RX.