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
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/fiedler-audio-dolby-atmos-composer
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.
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 wonder if there are any music mixes that used objects beyond the height speakers?
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.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.
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
Yeah - tried Fiedler a while back. Complete non-starter, primarily because of the post-fader plugin/insert requirement. Stability too. Incredibly, Logic has its own problems. There are issues with heights panning accurately, rendering ADM's that match what the Dolby ATMOS renderer delivers, and not supporting downmix settings. I spent so much time rendering in Logic, then trying to finalize renders with the Assembler - and they sounded completely different...I files some bugs w Apple and Dolby - some of the issues were reproduced by Apple support, but at least as far as I know, still not resolved. I'm also convinced that the BIN and Spatial monitoring in Logic aren't accurate - but I've not spent any time 'proving' it. Just gave up on Logic completely.Having upgraded my Atmos mixing machine to a trashcan Mac Pro during last summer (a huge improvement) I bought the full version of the Fielder Atmos Composer for a slightly discounted £199 GBP...I'd anticipated it suiting my intended workflow in Logic better than the built-in Atmos renderer. Sadly I experienced exactly the same stuttering digital glitching as I had done previously, even with Fiedler's own template Logic session. Once again the 'technical support' was pathetic, worse than useless - I get the impression that it's a one-man show and that he's spread himself too thinly. Sad about this as not only do I now have financial 'skin in th game' but I had high expectations around what this would do for me. Maybe because I needed it to do full speaker array stuff as opposed to binaural on earbuds I wasn't the target demographic...
Fair play if it enables non-Atmos platforms to do Atmos, but for me it was a completely crappy experience. I may give the guy another shake at some point down the line, but he was useless before and didn't offer anything by way of input and I decided not to waste any more time on him and his buggy nonsense. As previously, YMMV, but for me it was 0/10.
I've been using Logic since the mid 90s, when it superceded working with Notator on Atari along with my SADiE system for the audio, and it's served me well throughout several upgrades...I'm way too long in the tooth to change platforms at this point. I've only rendered out a couple of ADMs of work in progress and haven't noticed anything amiss, but can't say I've gotten at all forensic with it...will look out for anomalies next time. As with when you're starting out you eventually find out how not to make an album or how not to mix, I started out by learning how not to do an Atmos mix, and spent a long time evolving a workflow which is now yielding the kind of results I was imagining in my head before being confounded by the realities of what's involved. It's quite a journey, but an utterly inspiring one.Yeah - tried Fiedler a while back. Complete non-starter, primarily because of the post-fader plugin/insert requirement. Stability too. Incredibly, Logic has its own problems. There are issues with heights panning accurately, rendering ADM's that match what the Dolby ATMOS renderer delivers, and not supporting downmix settings. I spent so much time rendering in Logic, then trying to finalize renders with the Assembler - and they sounded completely different...I files some bugs w Apple and Dolby - some of the issues were reproduced by Apple support, but at least as far as I know, still not resolved. I'm also convinced that the BIN and Spatial monitoring in Logic aren't accurate - but I've not spent any time 'proving' it. Just gave up on Logic completely.
Having been lucky enough to have heard a few of your Atmos mixes in your studio, I'd say that they are excellent, fits/suits the music.I've been using Logic since the mid 90s, when it superceded working with Notator on Atari along with my SADiE system for the audio, and it's served me well throughout several upgrades...I'm way too long in the tooth to change platforms at this point. I've only rendered out a couple of ADMs of work in progress and haven't noticed anything amiss, but can't say I've gotten at all forensic with it...will look out for anomalies next time. As with when you're starting out you eventually find out how not to make an album or how not to mix, I started out by learning how not to do an Atmos mix, and spent a long time evolving a workflow which is now yielding the kind of results I was imagining in my head before being confounded by the realities of what's involved. It's quite a journey, but an utterly inspiring one.
I thought that running the Fielder thing would be less of a CPU hit than the Logic renderer, which even when doing nothing is quite processor-intensive. I'll file the Fiedler purchase, along with many others, as money spent on the road to knowing better!
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