Curious is anyone has dabbled in this "dolby atmos" claptrap and fooled around with any of their suggested mixing workflows. It seems stupid, or from a mixing perspective, to be more trouble than it's worth. Any steamers for takes?

I don't think it will be a useful tool for mixing music for general consumption, but in the AR/VR world these spatial tools are going to be a big deal. I goofed with some of it in Unity a couple of years ago and it was pretty fun, but not really my skill set yet, which is probably going to change soon since my wife works in AR/VR

Considering what it takes to have your studio certified "Atmos Compliant" I'm going to say its bullshit.

(Cycling nerd and friend of Tar) Brad Wood seems to be all about it. He was tweaking his studio to get it set up. I have no experience, but I'm supposed to go check it out sometime. Will report back if that ever happens.

In the end I think it will be a lot like surround sound as a technology for music. Fun, neat little trick that can deliver a lot of interesting ideas, but probably won't take off for most consumers in the end. It will thrive in multimedia, film, and probably video games, which is where the real dollar signs are for Audio work these days.

^ what he said. Dolby also wants to stay in business? Innovate? Nobody here will probably use it let alone need it.

benadrian wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:47 am (Cycling nerd and friend of Tar) Brad Wood seems to be all about it. He was tweaking his studio to get it set up. I have no experience, but I'm supposed to go check it out sometime. Will report back if that ever happens.

The reason that Brad Wood, Andrew Scheps, Sylvia Massey, and Greg Wells (as well as a ton of rooms in Nashville and LA) have made these rooms is because the big 3 have started dumping legacy hits by the truckload to these people in order to get their artists music in the Spatial Audio Playlists. Its straight up a disaster for most of the music released but that will get ironed out in time.

Personally I downloaded and installed the Atmos Production Suite and did a couple one off mixes then went to a friends house who has an Atmos system and listened to them. Its cool but fold down to stereo is a bitch and automation is very difficult unless you are mixing on a 11.2.1 system .

My sense is it will not catch on except with a new group of audiophiles (like Laserdisc) will insist on owning all the classics in Atmos.

l...o...l...

I'm way down with immersive audio technology developing, and I've worked on some sound design projects I'm pretty proud of for oculus based art installations.
Cool stuff!

What's funny to me about all this is that in the music recording world, we've spent the last 20 years adjusting to, and resigning ourselves to the fact that most music, will mostly be listened to on shitty little disposable in ear thingies.
BUT DOLBY ATMOS JUST IN CASE SOMEBODY IS LISTENING TO YOUR ALBUM IN A MOVIE THEATRE.

For cinema, musicals, the hifi home theatre world - very cool developments.
For rock and popular music, I think its a nightmare of overengineering.

So I am seeing a live music performance and I am standing at the front/back side. What happens to my perception of the atmos mix? Is there some kind of calculation at work so that it sounds immersive no matter where one is positioned in its field, or would it sound even more unbalanced than standing to the side of a stereo field?

Start small, let Itunes read FLAC files. This seems like comb filtering and phase nightmare in the making. I have a feeling it will never catch on. Here ,I have a question, since people are listen to music on those echo dot or what ever they are called, aren't they really listening to summed mono audio?