From our survey of over 5500 readers, with over 70% saying they made all or some of their income from audio production, only 3.8% of audio professionals are mainly mixing in Dolby Atmos. However, when asked, are there any topics/areas/types of products that you'd like us to cover more? Dolby Atmos was the most requested topic. Are you considering mixing music in Dolby Atmos and wondering whether it is worth investing in? Or is it a flash-in-the-pan that is here today and gone tomorrow? This is the article for you.
What Do You Need To Mix In Dolby Atmos?
To start with, let’s look at what is needed to mix content in Dolby Atmos. We have a detailed, recently updated article, Dolby Atmos - What Hardware And Software Do You Need To Work In Atmos?
In this article, we explored the minimum requirements for both hardware and software to be able to mix in Dolby Atmos. We look at which DAWs you can use, what additional software you may require, what speaker system you will need, and what monitor controller you will need.
The biggest outlay is for a monitoring system that can handle Dolby Atmos. Although you can go up to dozens of speakers, for most rooms, you do not need to go beyond a 9.1.6 configuration and, more commonly, 7.1.4. Although you can work on smaller systems like a 5.1.2 setup, or even headphones using the binaural renderer built into the Dolby Atmos Production Suite, you will not be able to fully experience how your mix will translate to other spaces, which is why Dolby recommends a minimum monitoring system to be 7.1.4 for Dolby Atmos for Music.
Which Comes First - Chicken Or Egg?
Before you spend money on all the necessary hardware and software, you need to be sure that you are going to get a return on investment, but here lies the next challenge, do you invest in Dolby Atmos slowly and quietly until you are completely set up and confident that you can deliver great Dolby Atmos mixes? Or do you wait until you see enough demand from your clients for Dolby Atmos and then have to make the transition very quickly so as not to miss out?
We explored this in our article Is It Worth Investing In Dolby Atmos? Audio Professionals Give Their Verdict, in which we outlined the business case for Dolby Atmos by asking industry experts, mixing in Dolby Atmos to share their business reasoning for investing in Dolby Atmos.
To help, here are a few quotes from some of the experts from this article…
“To me, this question is the wrong way around. For most people I know, including my own facility, the decision to push up to Atmos was not about what business we could gain, but about what business we would lose, by not being able to deliver Atmos or the expense of having to dry hire a facility with it. “
“Before COVID-19, only about 20% of the spec sheets coming in required Dolby Atmos. I would take these projects to another studio to complete because I didn’t have enough total Atmos projects to justify the upgrade cost. But in a COVID-19 world, I didn’t want to be dependent on another studio being open to satisfy a client’s needs. I needed to confidently say “yes” over the phone. And we’re gradually seeing more interest in Atmos either as an option or a requirement.”
“While I didn’t have a pressing demand from my schedule at the time to mix in Atmos, with studios like Netflix increasingly requiring Atmos deliverables on their spec sheets for projects, I wanted to be ahead of the curve. Making the jump to Atmos is more than just ordering some gear and running a few cables. I wanted to really understand the process and have my workflow down now so that I wasn’t “figuring it out” in the midst of a major project. So what did I do? I ordered some gear, ran a few cables, and dug in.”
“If one were building a facility or a single room from scratch any time over the last four years, up until right now, it would be silly to not at least plan for Atmos. However, if I were tacking Atmos on to an existing 5.1 or 7.1 facility, I would wait.”
Can I Charge More For Dolby Atmos?
But it’s not just about the choice to invest in the hardware and software as well as the training to do it well. The other part of the equation is whether you can charge more for Dolby Atmos related work or whether it’s a case of upgrading just to keep working. This is also covered in our article Is It Worth Investing In Dolby Atmos? Audio Professionals Give Their Verdict. Again, here are some snippets to whet your appetite…
“In terms of the upcharge, that is also a grey area. On the whole, productions seem to recognise that a lot more equipment, software and most importantly, expertise, is involved, but, most productions don't have the budget headroom to completely cover the sheer amount of investment required if you go for an incredibly expensive setup. Where you can "upcharge' though, is for the time it takes - the mastering and deliverables process is all real-time - there is no "offline export" process.
“I've been mixing a Netflix show, which although can handle Atmos deliverables, this particular show did not want to spend any more for Atmos so I'm just doing 5.1 mixes for it. I've had a couple of small jobs come in for Atmos specific mixes but have not been charging more than my daily mix rate for it. So my realistic tally after 1 year of full Atmos capability is that I have not earned even remotely enough to justify the expense; probably not even a single dollar above my normal rates. Maybe that will change and if it does, I'll certainly be ready for it but I just haven't seen the demand from my existing clients at this point.”
“You won’t necessarily be able to charge more for mixing in Atmos, but it will make you available to say yes to the job that (for creative reasons or studio spec sheets) requires it. Once you are set up to mix in Atmos, even if the spec sheet doesn’t require it, you can add an extra level of future-proofing to your work by mixing them natively in Atmos.”
“There is a higher rate for Atmos, but it is not way higher than the conventional rate. What happens is the time required increases anywhere from 20 to 50% compared to a conventional mix. Again this is completely dependent on the content that is being mixed.”
These are a very small selection of what our panel of experts had to say. We do recommend that you read the full article fully to fully understand all their experiences and advice.
Do The Record Labels Have FOMO When It Comes To Dolby Atmos?
Engineers and mixers are already reporting that they are being asked to do either new mixes or remixes that include Atmos. The labels are falling over themselves to get a chunk of the Atmos pie, there’s a lot of new music and even more legacy content they can repackage and resell. They seem to be suffering from FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out.
Some clients, including labels, expect professional mixers to deliver an Atmos mix for free as well as a stereo mix. You can imagine the lines that have been rolled out over and over; ‘can we do a test mix on this one?’ or ‘this is a loss leader for us, but support us now, and you’ll be the first person we call when we need more doing.’
As if to illustrate this very point, commenting on our article Dolby Atmos For Music - The Problem We Need To Talk About Production Expert contributor William Wittman revealed this…
“I have a friend who was being hired to do some Atmos mixes until the label decided to take on basically a glorified assistant engineer to churn them out for a much lower price”
We should be shocked, but in reality, it doesn’t surprise me but this attitude of doing it as cheaply as possible is having a significant detrimental effect on the reputation of Dolby Atmos content, and this is bad for us all.
What Do People Think About Dolby Atmos?
When you start to look into what people think about Dolby Atmos, you can find a wide range of different opinions from statements from Radiohead’s producer Nigel Godrich who dismisses “this Dolby Atmos rubbish” and says, “I think it’s all a bit of a bluff really”, through to Dean St Studios' Jan 'Stan' Kybert, who’s worked with the likes of Paul Weller and Oasis, who says of Dolby Atmos for music is “definitely going to supersede stereo”.
Nigel Godrich, sometimes referred to as ‘the sixth member of Radiohead’ shared his thoughts on Dolby Atmos and music on Jamie Lidell’s Hanging Out With Audiophiles podcast. In this podcast, Nigel said…
“What I do feel about mono, stereo, 5.1… whatever - all this Dolby Atmos rubbish - is that music… you can’t get something that’s in 5.1 to ‘cook’; you never could. That’s one of the problems they’re having with Atmos, actually, is that you can’t master it. You can’t put, like, an overall compression on it, really.
I always used to say that, if you go to see a movie and there’s like an old Rolling Stones track in it, it always sounds fucking amazing… and yet music that is designed for that audio format (the 7.1 or whatever) it’s always… whatever it is it’s not that great, necessarily…. I think it’s all a bit of a bluff really. I think mono is, obviously, a bit limited, and stereo is optimum - that’s what I think.”
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised that Nigel is not complimentary about immersive audio in general and Dolby Atmos in particular. For example, he told The Guardian Newspaper in a Q and A session…
“I think people attach too much weight to equipment and studio trickery when the reality is I consider the most important part of making records is about musical sensibility and communication with those involved, and the notes, and the words. I get very annoyed with people asking me what my favourite microphone is. It doesn't matter. These days I don't even use the expensive ones. One of the reasons why music has become generally worse, and I'm sorry to say that, is that people think about technology more than the actual music they're making.”
For a different view of Dolby Atmos, we turn to Jan 'Stan' Kybert, Creative Director and responsible for installing the Dean St. Studios Atmos facility. Jan told Music Radar…
“We’ve been waiting for a replacement for stereo for decades. It’s an ancient technology. With music, you want to feel something, like with a Saturday night or Sunday morning record. They make me feel ‘Saturday night’ or ‘Sunday morning’. That feeling has been lost with stereo now, and it’s not stereo’s fault, but with Dolby Atmos, that feeling is there. It’s bigger, more exciting and wants to make you move, be more intimate, more relaxed or whatever. Everything it does, it does it on a richer level.
You might have a forward-facing Dolby Atmos mix - drums, bass and vocal - coming at you, and then you'll maybe use the Atmos technology to wrap an orchestra around the listener. Or you have extra width. With stereo, there is this trend to use wideners, but with Atmos, it can be as wide as you ever need it and as tall as you ever want it.
The tools that Atmos gives me in height, width, depth and sub are everything you need in comparison to stereo. In stereo you are always making sacrifices when mixing, like if you want to hear the guitar you may have to turn the Hammond down. You are constantly having to make decisions and carve out EQs in consideration of what other instrumentation is playing. You don’t need to do that in Atmos as there is enough space for everybody. The music is so dynamic, and it is such a joy to experience.”
Is The Problem The Format Or The Mixer?
When looking at what people are saying about Dolby Atmos, especially music in Dolby Atmos, there is another very important question to consider.
Are the problems people are experiencing with music in Dolby Atmos, down to the format and its delivery to the consumer or the result of bad mixes?
Or could it be because of the push from the record labels’ fear of missing out on another revenue stream? Are they choosing to save money and do it quickly or badly rather than do it right?
Nigel Godrich, in his podcast interview with Jamie Lidell, clearly thinks it is a problem with the format, and not just Dolby Atmos, but any immersive format after hearing a 5.1 mix in Bob Ludwig’s demo room…
“And I said ‘OK, that’s enough for me’, that’s proof that this is wrong. It’s just fundamentally not right, because a ‘pseudo-technical’ decision had been made, as opposed to a musical decision. And that’s what’s wrong with all of these things; people are pushing things, and their priority is the technology, not the music.”
Mary Stone from What Hi-fi has over a decade of experience working as a sound engineer mixing live events, music and theatre, seems to be on the fence. She said in her article The problem with Dolby Atmos music is its inconsistency…
“The format's implementation in music still feels a bit like the Wild West, and for me has yet to yield a convincing case for its potential dominance as the format du jour. And even if this is the start of the Dolby Atmos Music era, I don’t think that stereo need go anywhere just yet.”
Apple Spatial Audio - Is It All Hype?
But how much of this bad reputation can be put down to Apple’s implementation of Dolby Atmos - Apple Spatial Audio?
In our article, Apple Spatial Audio - Is It All Hype? published in June 2021, we acknowledged that mixed reports were coming out about the immersive audio experience on Apple Music. Just two days after Apple started rolling out Spatial Audio, Chris Welch from The Verge voiced mixed reviews about some of the spatial audio Dolby Atmos content that is already up on Apple Music. In their article Apple Music’s Spatial Audio Is Sometimes Amazing But Mostly Inconsistent, he said…
“At launch, it’s a very hit or miss experience... …Problem is, with much of the Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music I’ve sampled so far, it doesn’t seem like everyone is making those right calls. It’s a hit-or-miss game of exploration, and songs that truly showcase the immersive potential of Atmos are more often the exception than the rule. In many cases, spatial audio tracks have an artificial wideness to them, unfamiliar placement of vocals and instrumentation, and just sound… off. Distant? Too reverb-y? Pick your preferred interpretation. Yet, Apple is so confident in Apple Music’s spatial audio that essentially overnight it became the default for millions of customers listening with AirPods.”
In our article, Apple Spatial Audio - Is It All Hype, we looked at the same tracks as The Verge’s Chris Welch, and you can see how our thoughts matched or not.
Next, Production Expert contributor Audrey Martinovich shared some of her thoughts and experiences, including this observation…
“it seems like the mixing approaches are pretty varied. One school of thought seems to be “place the singer as if they are the listener”, which, to me, makes the vocals less punchy and less direct. In some songs, this vocal position almost sounded like there were phase issues attenuating the low mids resulting in a hollow-sounding vocal.
The other school of thought for mixing spatial audio seems to be “place the lead vocals in front of the listener”, which was my personal preference because I thought it maintained the clarity and presence in the vocal better.”
Then we turned to Production Expert contributor Nathaniel Reichmann. He already had experience of hearing Atmos mixes on his studio system via TIDAL as well as listening to Atmos tracks via Apple Music using headphones…
“Last November [2020], I signed up for TIDAL and installed an Apple TV 4K and an Atmos home theater receiver in my 7.1.4 studio. I felt like a kid in a candy store. Albums from artists I’d never heard of sounded amazing, and filled the room with an extraordinary sound. Some major artists on big labels had awful-sounding albums that made me dive for the remote control. It was absolutely hit or miss.”
My teenage boys visited the studio and were captivated by the experience. One of them pointed to Apple Music on the Mac and said, “Can we hear all the songs like this?” We would cue up the same album in Atmos and stereo, gain-match the levels, and then switch back and forth. It made us all laugh because the version we were all so accustomed to, stereo, sounded claustrophobic and boxy by comparison. And it wasn’t just the claustrophobia, it was also dynamics. Atmos mixes were made in calibrated rooms without a ton of limiting, so when the drums came in, or when a brass section went for double-forte, it was big and powerful and exciting. Even dance music, which is known for heavy limiting, sounded cooler with a high dynamic range.”
If you want to learn more you can read all of our observations in the article Apple Spatial Audio - Is It All Hype?
Coming back to something Mary Stone from What Hi-fi said in her article, The problem with Dolby Atmos music is its inconsistency published in January 2022…
“Naturally, the experience varies considerably depending on your playback set-up. Still, there’s a very low barrier to entry and Atmos has been democratised in a way that previous surround formats could never achieve.
But when it comes to headphones, I can’t help but feel that Dolby Atmos Music often dilutes many of the attributes that can make private listening so enjoyable and enveloping. Having listened extensively to Atmos playlists across a number of services (mainly comprised of music re-mixed in Atmos as opposed to music recorded and mixed natively in Atmos) and attempted to correct for loudness bias, I’ve found that despite the expansiveness and localisation of the newer remixes, the stereo versions tend to have more presence (particularly with vocals), intensity and intimacy – all factors I believe contribute to a feeling of immersion.
While music remixed for Atmos can be placed convincingly within a space, this often results in a more diffused and ambient sound that can actually decrease its visceral value.”
But that is not all. Another challenge is the technology used by streaming companies to deliver Dolby Atmos content to the consumer. Mary Stone continues…
“There's not yet a consistent approach to dealing with Atmos codecs across platforms. There are presently two different Atmos formats that streaming services use: AC4-IMS is a recent codec optimised for headphone playback that makes use of specific binaural settings that can be dictated by the producer, whereas DD+JOC is an older format designed for speaker playback of films that does not take into account binaural configurations.
While Amazon and Tidal use the former [AC4-IMS] for headphone playback on mobile devices and the latter for speaker playback, Apple Music only employs DD+JOC regardless of the hardware being used, which means even if artists go to the trouble of crafting a Dolby Atmos mix adjusted for headphones, their preference will not be represented by Apple Music. How can a format be heralded as the most faithful representation of an artistic vision if its primary form of consumption sometimes disregards the choices of the producer?”
In a conversation between Bob Clearmountain and Jesse Ray Ernster on the Tape Op site (the video above is part 1, as soon as part 2 is published, we will post it here), they covered a wide range of mixing techniques, including a detailed chat about mixing in Dolby Atmos, which is well worth reading just for that, but towards the end, Jesse asks Bob whether we really need Dolby Atmos and is it really necessary? and Bob Clearmountain gives this very interesting reply…
“I keep thinking that. I shouldn’t say this, probably, but I think in a couple of years it’s going to go away. I really do. I think people will say, “Okay, the headphone thing doesn’t really do anything, I can’t afford to put an Atmos system in my home, and stereo’s fine.” It’ll fade away. But I dunno. Maybe not. I hope that the opposite happens. I’m hoping that these home audio companies, whoever it is – Sonos, Pioneer, or Sony – will come up with inexpensive Atmos systems that people can put in their living room.”
It’s Not All Bad
Dean Street Studios’ creative director Jan 'Stan' Kybert is in no doubt about the future of Dolby Atmos…
“As a stereo mixer, what keeps me awake at night is how my mixes are going to translate on someone’s headphones, in a club, on the kitchen radio or on a very nice pair of Focal home hi-fi speakers. I have one mix that has to serve all platforms. Atmos for music is actually a dynamic format so when I create an Atmos mix, it will adapt to the device that it is playing on. Play it on your Sonos Soundbar which is 5.1.2, and it will optimise to play on that device. Play it on your Sennheiser 660 headphones and you’ll get the binaural mix and so on.”
This is a sentiment echoed by community member Patrice Lazareff who, commenting on our article, Dolby Atmos For Music - The Problem We Need To Talk About said this…
“If the format lives on, its main beauty is the "mix once, play everywhere" feature, which means that Atmos would then become the default.”
Capitol recording engineer and friend of the blog Steve Genewick is one of the pioneers in Dolby Atmos Music. In a Dolby Labs video, he talked about why he loves mixing with Atmos…
“As mixers, we’ve always been jamming stuff into stereo and carving stuff out to make it fit, and now we don’t have to do that. The palette is so much bigger.
If two things are clashing, I just move them apart, and it works. I don’t have to EQ and compress stuff. I can really keep the integrity of the music. I can keep the dynamics. There’s a whole new set of tools and a whole new space to convey the emotion of the song.”
In Conclusion
So what can we conclude from everything we have shared in this article?
There is no doubt that low-cost repurposing is damaging the format’s reputation. Apple’s Spatial audio and the way they have chosen to implement binaural rendering is also not helping, but as we showed in our article Apple Spatial Audio - Is It All Hype? well crafted mixes sound great, whereas other mixes were disappointing, which shows that Apple’s Spatial Audio format, though not ideal, is in itself not the cause of poor sound mixes on the platform.
The Dolby Atmos format has a lot to offer. When it comes to space, Steve Genewick put his finger on it when he said, “If two things are clashing, I just move them apart, and it works”.
You can also create space with more dynamics. Steve Genewick again, “I don’t have to EQ and compress stuff. I can really keep the integrity of the music. I can keep the dynamics.“ After the loudness wars, this surely has to be a good thing.
Another benefit of Dolby Atmos is that you no longer need to deliver multiple different formats. Delivery services take the Atmos deliverable, and the consumer’s equipment presents a version appropriate to the hardware available as Jan Kybert explained, “I have one mix that has to serve all platforms. Atmos for music is actually a dynamic format, so when I create an Atmos mix, it will adapt to the device that it is playing on. Play it on your Sonos Soundbar, which is 5.1.2, and it will optimise to play on that device. Play it on your Sennheiser 660 headphones, and you’ll get the binaural mix and so on.” There is no need to second-guess how a mix should sound on all the different variations and permutations of formats out there. With a Dolby Atmos signal flow, the consumer’s equipment will present a downmix best suited to the environment.
However, we should not underestimate the biggest challenge to the take-up by consumers of Dolby Atmos, and that is the desire by clients and labels to rush out poor-quality remixes of all their back catalogue in an attempt to generate another revenue stream and by doing so give Dolby Atmos a bad reputation.
Wherever possible, as creatives, we need to push against this and not give in and offer Dolby Atmos services at no extra cost. It takes time (and therefore money) to learn how to mix, or remix, in Dolby Atmos and it takes time to do it well. We need a return on investment on that time and money as well as the investment in hardware and software.
What Hi-fi’s Mary Stone was right when she said of Dolby Atmos, “The format's implementation in music still feels a bit like the Wild West”. We are still learning how to mix in this format, and ideally we never should stop learning. We need to be creative, we need to develop a new vocabulary of what works and what doesn’t because if we don’t the future of Dolby Atmos and all the benefits it brings could be lost.