[Dolby Atmos] Do I have to have a bed?

[austinsignal]

Only objects will engage the wides. If you were to pan something in a circular pattern within the bed, the sound would travel from the sides to the fronts and ignore the wides.

A good example of this is in “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from Who’s Next - the synthesizer intermittently moves around all seven floor channels, but the wides only feature some dry lead vocal.

In Pro-Tools, if I set my object panner’s F/R dial to 68% (with no height) the sound comes exclusively from the wide speakers.

View attachment 97963
https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/dolby-atmos-faq-background-setup-mixing-tips/

Wow! Thanks for this! Had no idea!

 

[AYanguas]

I'd really like to see some technical specs, so I don't have to guess and assume. I'm surprised nobody here has access to any AES journal entries, at least.

These references are not "very technical" but they illustrate the bed and objects concepts.

https://professionalsupport.dolby.c...rence-between-beds-and-objects?language=en_US

https://professional.dolby.com/siteassets/tv/home/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-for-home-theater.pdf

 

[DuncanS]

In reading the thread, I've always figured the "bed" meant the channels of (up to) 7.x. And, I always figured that the Atmos metadata would subtract a signal from the bed and place it in space with volume and phase of all speakers available to it.

I'd really like to see some technical specs, so I don't have to guess and assume. I'm surprised nobody here has access to any AES journal entries, at least.

I'm in the AES, but the last time I looked there was nothing that technical on Atmos (at least its not like the IEEE, where I'm also a member, and you often find something after a search and then find you have to pay to get it). I'll have another look on AES for Atmos as its been a while since I last did a search.

 

[jimfisheye]

There really aren't any restrictions.

You can create any multichannel format you want to in the DAW. You can pan as you please and route the panning output channels as you please. You can assign audio to objects as you wish. And again, you could make a bed of blank audio if you needed it for a place holder as it were for the software.