In this series of 6 articles, Post-Production Specialist and Immersive Audio expert Alan Sallabank will be sharing tips and tricks to help you get to grips with the audio post-production workflows for content to be delivered in Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment, which will be especially useful if you are delivering to the likes of Netflix and Amazon. Multi-national and streaming distributors are especially keen on Dolby Atmos, as it is what is known as a “single file delivery”, which automatically adapts according to the playback device.

Part 1

In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, looking at Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment workflows, we start with how to set up your Pro Tools session and the Dolby Atmos Production Suite as well as a look at some terminology.

What You Will Need

The Dolby Atmos Production Suite and The Dolby Audio Bridge are software solutions, so while you don’t need any specific Avid or Dolby hardware to follow the advice in these tutorials, you will need specific versions of software -

• Pro Tools Ultimate 2019.10 or later - 2020.3 recommended

• Dolby Atmos Production Suite v3.4

Running everything in software does also put quite a strain on your host computer, so I would also recommend that you are running a machine with at least six physical cores and at least 32GB of RAM.

Endless Possibilities

Mixing in Dolby Atmos can unlock a whole new world of creative possibilities and really bring any piece to life with immersive audio. However, in order to ensure that all your creative efforts aren’t thwarted at the final hurdle - delivery, it’s vitally important to plan ahead.

This means starting the process by carefully analysing your delivery requirements - what you need to deliver in order for your content to reach the outside world, whether it’s a commissioned piece or self-funded and distributed.

Objects And Beds

Whereas in “traditional” surround systems, you send audio to specific speaker locations, prearranged in the playback room, Dolby Atmos works differently. You still have the option to route to and pan between specific speakers - this case, the “Beds”, which can be up to 7.1.2 in size, but Dolby Atmos also gives you the option of using “Objects”.

These differ from Beds in that they are not fixed speaker locations, but point sources of sound, that exist in a 3D space. Because these are point sources rather than speaker channels, their position within the 3D listening space remains the same, regardless of how many physical speakers you have in your listening area.

Room Setup

Once you’ve worked out exactly what you need to deliver, you can then move to setting up your room.

To get to this, go to the Dolby Atmos Production Suite and select Window > Room Setup.

The Window menu is also where you will find other important setup menus.

While this might seem the first step, because you might only have a finite variety of possible routing and IO configurations, this seemingly first step has to come second. If your client wants to attend your mix, you have to manage their expectations. If you’re selling the virtues of an immersive mix but only have 5.1 with no height speakers, you’re likely to fall short of your client’s expectations.

You can see in the example above that Dolby assumes that you at least have stereo monitoring. Under the “Speaker Setup” tab, you can click on the speaker locations to match the setup of your room.

Delivery Requirements

Every Atmos production will also be distributed on media that does not or cannot support Dolby Atmos. For this reason, as well as the Atmos master mix, you will also have to provide numerous different “flat” mixes - non-immersive WAV files, for every Atmos mix you produce, plus stems to enable localisation and promotions. Even if you are working on a micro-budget production or a self-funded production, it’s vitally important to be prepared.

Dolby To The Rescue

Thankfully, Dolby thought about this, and with careful set up all the necessary deliverables and more, are achievable. In fact, there are a whole myriad of settings within the Dolby Atmos Production Suite and Pro Tools, which will affect your choice of workflow completely.

Free Tutorial Series

To learn how to get going in such a way that you avoid “mixing yourself into a corner”, watch this first episode of our exclusive tutorial series:

Next Episode

Come back for the next episode of this free tutorial series, where we’ll be exploring Avid and Dolby’s recommendations for trouble-free operation when using the Dolby Audio Bridge, with both non-Avid and Avid branded hardware.