Dolby Atmos - Approaches To Immersive Music Object-Based Mastering
In this article, we feature an excellent long-form video from mixing and mastering engineer Justin Gray, in which he explores mastering music in Dolby Atmos.
Justin has recently made this extended, in-depth video on Mastering music in Dolby Atmos. Please be warned that this video is really long. In fact, it is over 3 hours in duration in order to explore this topic fully; there are so many elements that need to be firmly clarified before confidently discussing object-based music mastering.
For those of you who know him, he has been mixing, producing, and mastering Dolby Atmos music for close to 5 years. Justin has worked on close to 600 songs in Atmos so far, refining and updating his techniques along the way. As such, this content/philosophy is based on his experience working in Dolby Atmos but is also heavily informed by his stereo-mastering practice.
The first half of the video is largely dedicated to technical details and considerations, whereas the second half explores current mastering Atmos practices and philosophy. Justin has carefully chapterised this video to enable viewers to go straight to specific topics if desired. That being said, even for advanced Atmos mixers, there are some details pertaining to consumer formats, loudness/normalisation, and translation philosophy which he is trying his best to explore at a high level.
His goal with these videos is to bring clarity to the Atmos music ecosystem. He has presented on this topic at AES in NYC last autumn but did not have enough time to get to this level of detail in that presentation.
00:00 Introduction
02:02 Presentation Overview
02:56 What is Dolby Atmos
09:02 Objects vs. Beds
18:46 Spatial Coding
28:27 Mix Approaches in Atmos
34:53 Atmos Loudness
44:05 Dialnorm
50:43 DD+ JOC
57:51 Apple Spatial Audio
1:05:30 AC-4 IMS
1:23:30 Dolby True HD
1:26:55 Atmos Mastering Aesthetics
1:35:27 What To Deliver for Atmos Mastering
1:39:52 Getting Started
1:47:30 Approaches to Atmos Mastering
2:04:59 Immersive Object-Based Stem Mastering
2:07:18 The Mastering Studio
2:16:44 Tonal Balancing
2:30:08 Sonic Averaging
2:35:14 Dynamic Range Control
2:51:13 Dolby Atmos Assembler
2:59:49 My Loudness Philosophy
3:04:30 LFE Tuning
3:07:06 Bass Management
3:07:20 Trim and Downmix Management
3:08:10 Supervised Stereo Fold Down
3:09:44 Sequencing
3:11:16 QC
3:11:49 Atmos Master File Deliverables & Archiving
3:13:34 Listening and Referencing
3:13:12 Communication
3:14:29 Current Challenges
3:17:36 Is Atmos Mastering Necessary?
3:23:28 Gratitude and Conclusion
Dolby Atmos And Music - Principles Outlined By Justin Gray At The Start Of The Video
In order to make strong production decisions for this format (recording, mixing and mastering), we must understand how this format is delivered/consumed and anticipate how that will expand in the future.
For music production, Dolby Atmos is a creation, encoding and delivery technology that provides immersive audio to consumers.
Dolby Atmos is an adaptive immersive audio format that combines discrete channel audio (beds) and channel adaptive audio (objects) to create an adaptive music delivery format. These are…
DD+ JOC
AC4-IMS
Dolby TrueHD
Although speaker layouts such as 7.1.4, 9.1.6 etc… are required for professional-level Dolby Atmos mixing and mastering, they are not required to produce music in the format and are not required for consumers to experience music in the format.
Dolby Atmos can be seen as a digital cube (cartesian) containing audio and associated rendering metadata. The OAR (Object Audio Renderer) renders a mix appropriate to the available playback system for speaker playback.
Take Your Time
There is a huge amount of information in this video from Justin Gray. Take your time, take notes and bookmark it so you can easily come back to it.
About Justin Gray
Justin Gray is an award-winning producer, mixing engineer and mastering engineer based in Toronto. Justin is a leader in the field of immersive audio mixing & mastering, where he works with artists, producers and labels worldwide to bring their music to life in the Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio formats.
Throughout his career, Justin has enjoyed working with a diverse range of musical styles. Some of his recent clients have included: Snoop Dogg, Brandy, Arkells, Nicky Youre, Lola Brooke, Upsahl, Jamie Fine and Mother Mother.
As a mixing and mastering engineer, Justin works out of his own studio (Synthesis Sound & Immersive Mastering), which is one of the first Dolby Atmos and Sony 360RA certified music studios in Canada.
As an educator, Justin is on faculty at Humber College in Toronto, where teaches audio production, composition and music performance. Over the course of his career, Justin has received several awards and distinctions, including the recent 2022 Juno Award for best Jazz Album.
Justin has two websites depending on what you are looking for him to help you with…
Synthesis Sound Production & Mixing
Immersive Mastering Mastering
Want To Learn More?
We have also produced a lot of Dolby Atmos for music content over the years, and here is a selection of what we have to offer.
Mixing Music In Dolby Atmos - Everything You Need To Know
In this article, we look at what it takes to make your studio suitable to mix in Dolby Atmos for music, whether you need certification, what hardware and software you will need, how to build or convert your studio to Dolby Atmos, as well as our exclusive 6 part tutorial series on setting up and using Pro Tools Ultimate and Dolby Atmos Production Suite to work together in this exclusive everything-you-need-to-know guide to mixing music in Dolby Atmos.