Brief Summary

Mastering is an essential quality control check in stereo workflows, helping to ensure that mixes translate well onto other systems. As Atmos for Music gains popularity, access to reliable Atmos monitoring, or indeed any Atmos loudspeaker monitoring at all, is a barrier to entry to many. Is something analogous to traditional mastering the answer for those who want to create Atmos content and are starting on headphones?

Going Deeper

Mastering is something which we seem to spend a lot of time talking about. The details change and the meaning of mastering has become obscured to some extent. Music production has decentralized from how it used to be decades ago, with purpose built studios, traditional record companies and distribution of physical media largely giving way to home studios distributing via streaming services.

There are a lot of positives and negatives on both sides of these two extremes, and the role of mastering has changed along with everything else. Something which has become obscured to some extent by the availability of mastering plugins and AI based mastering services is the role of a traditional mastering engineer as a quality check on mixes which sometimes have only been heard by one person in one room. If nothing else, mastering should be this check and if a mix passes through a mastering engineer’s hands without any changes, it’s still been mastered, and the mix engineer should be very pleased with that result!

AI Mastering

The role of the mastering engineer faces new pressures every year, with developments like Logic Pro introducing an AI based mastering feature into the DAW itself it’s no longer just mastering engineers who are under pressure, the automated mastering services which present a challenge to mastering engineers are under pressure from these in-DAW features too. Meanwhile, good, established mastering engineers are continuing to serve their regular clients who understand the difference between using a human-based mastering service and the more recent alternatives.

When talking about current developments in music production it’s hard to ignore Dolby Atmos for Music. The major DAWs all offer an Atmos workflow, streaming services offer immersive content and viable methods for consumers to experience these mixes over smart speakers and headphones. But what about mastering? Is mastering for Atmos a ‘thing’?

Bus Processing And Atmos

Atmos works differently to stereo. It’s not a channel-based format. While channel-based beds of different widths exist, and processing can be applied at these points, the Objects which are so different in Atmos, are processed at the point the mix is rendered. If, for example, you want to use a compressor at the mastering stage, there isn’t an obvious place to do this. With the introduction of wider tracks in Pro Tools, it's now possible to create up to a 9.1.6 bus and mix through that. and this Bed/Bus approach allows engineers to mix via 9.1.6 dynamics plugin.

You need only look at Mark Gittins’ recent article checking out PSP’s Auralcomp to see how this issue is starting to be tackled more comprehensively to provide a closer equivalent to 2-Bus processing in Atmos. It’s possible but needs different tools. In time this need will be addressed by as wide a choice of tools as anywhere else in the production, but there is another issue facing Atmos music which can’t be addressed with a plugin and potentially represents an opportunity.

Every Atmos Mix Needs To Be Heard Over Loudspeakers

Every professional Atmos mixer I’ve ever spoken to has maintained that, while it’s possible to monitor Atmos mixes binaurally using headphones. You have to check Atmos content on a loudspeaker monitoring system. I’ve mixed Atmos using headphones, I’ve used personalised HRTFs to further improve the immersion and the positional acuity. But it’s not enough on its own, even though the majority of listeners will only hear the Binaural mix.

The issue is broadly similar to the problems you might encounter if you mix stereo material on inadequate monitoring, or indeed headphones - issues with translation. While an Atmos mix can sound good as a binaural render on headphones, it won’t necessarily translate into a good mix on other playback systems. A good Atmos mix on a properly set up Atmos monitoring system stands a much better chance of translating well to other playback systems, including binaural renders.

A significant amount of work on an Atmos project can be done on headphones, but these methods are devised as being complementary to mixing on Atmos monitoring, not as an alternative to it. For example the Genelec Aural ID system offers a way to access a binaural environment which matches as closely as is possible the specific Genelec monitoring system a user might have installed, allowing work to be done away from the mix room, but never instead of it.

Is Atmos An Opportunity For Mastering Engineers?

Here we have an interesting opportunity for studios. With increasing demand for Atmos mixes from labels and the equipment necessary to create Atmos content in easy reach of any DAW user, the missing element is access to Atmos monitoring for at least part of the project. Much music no longer needs access to a dedicated tracking space, projects often contain no ‘live’ audio beyond vocals. But whereas a traditional band recording might have used a commercial studio for tracking with the resulting recording being mixed in a project or home studio, for Atmos, music which is created in the box in a home studio might be completed by accessing a suitable Atmos-equipped mix space, possibly as a dry hire but equally likely with an experienced Atmos mixer in attendance to check and tweak a project created using binaural Atmos monitoring, or a less than perfect Atmos monitoring install.

While not exactly the same as a traditional stereo Mastering session, this would be fulfilling the same role in that it is the much-needed quality check by someone not involved in the earlier stages of the project, in a different room in a properly set up monitoring environment.

So is this happening? Asking around the Expert Contributors it seems this niche has already been identified. Nathaniel Reichman commented that:

While it is possible to get an Atmos mix started in headphones, there are dangerous mistakes you can make if you don’t have the opportunity to audition your mix on an immersive loudspeaker system before your work goes public. Solutions for doing this usually come in three different levels of involvement. The first is hiring an Atmos mixer who will take your original session and stereo master and remix in Atmos accordingly (starting with all of the original multitracks and mix automation). The second is sending mixed stems to an Atmos mixer, and the third is simply auditioning an Atmos mix on loudspeakers and making tweaks. There has been a great deal of financial investment in new Atmos mix rooms worldwide. My anecdotal experience in the northeast U.S. (Boston, New York, Washington D.C) is that these rooms have wildly different levels of busyness. Some rooms are running 24/7, and others are open, not well-known yet, and lightly booked. I recommend getting in touch with studio owners and asking about an easy booking of a couple of hours just to hear a few Atmos master files or ADMs. Artists get very excited about immersive sound, and on more than a few occasions I’ve seen artists and labels spend the additional resources to do an Atmos mix properly once they hear what’s possible.

I’ve done a few albums this year that came to me as basically finished stereo Pro Tools sessions. Sitting with the artist, mixer or producer in an Atmos room and playing some of my favorite Atmos cuts was inspiring to everyone. Those short listening sessions then led to larger Atmos mixing jobs where the studio owner and I were both able to bill for our services. In some cases, I was also the stereo mastering engineer. In others, I worked with a separate mastering engineer. The best workflow is one in which the mix starts in Atmos and then moves down to the lower formats. My stereo mixes tend to be better after I’ve done immersive mixing of the same content. And then there’s the question of whether the stereo version is independent of the Atmos version, or a down-mixed re-render of the Atmos version. That’s the subject of another article altogether…

If you’re interested in getting into the Atmos workflow, a great place to start is Dolby’s free Atmos Music Creation 101 course, though with Logic Pro and Studio One both having integrated Atmos Renderers and an integrated Atmos Renderer coming to Pro Tools soon the complexity of setting up an Atmos system is getting simpler. If you find yourself wanting to access a Dolby Atmos studio then certification from Dolby is a reassurance of quality, Atmos studios don’t have to be certified but if the studio you are using has such a certification it is an assurance that the system and the room are correctly set up. Dolby host a directory of studios on their website.

Setting up an Atmos studio represents a significant investment of both money and time. But this doesn’t have to be a barrier to entry. If you have a DAW and a pair of headphones you have sufficient equipment to do much of the work. If your Atmos mix is ever going to leave your studio it should be heard over a suitable loudspeaker and there is probably a studio accessible to you, with an experienced Atmos mixer, which you could use for this purpose.