Universal Music and Dolby remix some of the world’s most popular music in Dolby Atmos using Avid S6 and Pro Tools | HDX. In this video, Avid brought together a panel of practitioners already mixing music in Dolby Atmos hosted by Avid Product Specialist Jeff Komar.

• Greg Penny – Record Producer, Recording Engineer, Mixing Engineer, Musician, Songwriter, Artist

• Bruce Botnick – Audio Engineer, Record Producer

• Steve Genewick – Grammy-nominated Recording Engineer

• Doug Higgins – VP, WW Audio at Pixelogic Media

Below are the main questions Jeff Komar posed to the panel in the video and some nuggets, Mike picked out from the answers. These are not intended to replace the video but to give you some of the highlights from the conversation.

Q. There are a lot of questions out there in mixing music in Dolby Atmos is “how do I approach this and creatively and philosophically how do I approach this?

Bruce Botnick “All of these years we have been jamming everything into two speakers and now we can open it up and create the depth”.

Steve Genewick “When I start a mix I try and conceptualise what approach I am going to take. If it is something more orchestral then you are going to be the guy sitting in front of the conductor or if this is a crazy song and I am just going to go nuts. But I start with the concept that I think is going to work, it may change and you will probably start to move stuff around”.

Q. The format of Dolby Atmos is 128 channels with a combination of beds and objects and you have to ask yourself what am I going to use? A bed could be 7.1.2 or 5.1 or 7.1 and then you have x number of objects, which are mono or stereo, and so you are going to have to choose how you are going to use this stuff, what is your approach?

Steve Genewick “I will use beds for sometimes for things but most of the time I don’t use bed tracks. Beds are more for theatrical productions where Dolby has more control over the theatres. In music, we don’t have that option because we are in people’s homes. What I have found is if I use an object and place it in the room it stays there, no matter what room I am in.

Q. What about processing, dynamic, limiting etc? Obviously you can do that with a bed but how do you deal with dynamics on objects?

Steve Genewick “I mix! I don’t have a bus compressor. There isn’t one that exists [because he uses objects rather than beds]. I have found that mixing in this format I don’t need to jam it into a small space. I mix way more dynamic in Atmos than I do in stereo”.

Doug Higgins “ Getting back dynamics is probably one of the single biggest enhancements”.

Q. What about the issue of re-renders, do you listen to your mixes in 7.1 or 5.1 and QC them? 

Greg Penny “Its the best practice to do that or to use binaural”. 

Q. What about your use of objects, do you use them statically? What about using objects dynamically?

Bruce Botnick “I tend to use them to create a room. If you use beds you can go up but you cannot hit the corners. If you want to go there then you need to use objects.”

Q. How do you approach the height channels, what do you choose to put in the height channels, how do you use it creatively?

Bruce Botnick “Things will tell you where they got to go!”

Steve Genewick “I was one the first guys mixing music in Dolby Atmos so I didn’t have a lot to listen to. As I have developed I have learnt how to use the height to make things bigger. If you turn them off you hear it go away but you are not aware of the vocal up there.”

Bruce Botnick “You don’t want to be distracting, by putting something there just because you need to put it somewhere. Everything has to have a purpose.”

Steve Genewick “Up until now we have been dealing with legacy music but I cannot wait until we get to do this on new music where artists are writing for this format.”

There was a Q and A session which concluded this session.

If you are thinking of working in Dolby Atmos then we do recommend you watch and listen to the video all the way through.