What Is Audio Reversioning?
Bizarrely, audio reversioning is something we have been doing in the audio post-production sector for a long time now, but until recently, it didn’t have a proper name. However, with the explosion of multiple audio formats and speaker layouts and the adoption of immersive formats like Dolby Atmos, the need to go from one format to another has exploded. In response, the tools to handle this have improved and the term ‘audio reversioning’ has been born.
Where Did It All Start?
Back in the days when we only had mono and stereo to deal with, as long as the stereo content was mono-compatible, life was relatively easy. Audio was acquired in mono or stereo, sound effects and music were produced in stereo and mixes were delivered in stereo and were compatible with the one format we had to worry about mono.
We will define what we consider reversioning is later in the article. But first, we will outline the history to show how we have got to where we are now.
The Need For Upmixing
When surround sound came along, first 5.1 and then 7.1, very little content was acquired or created directly into these formats. Even though we were delivering and mixing content in 5.1 and 7.1, most audio was acquired in mono or stereo, and our sound effects and music libraries were nearly all in stereo or mono. We needed ways to reversion all our stereo and mono content into 5.1 and 7.1, and as a result of this need, upmixers were born.
Audio professionals needed to ensure that their mixes, which also included stereo content upmixed into 5.1 and 7.1 when downloaded into consumers' hardware, would be compatible when downmixed back to stereo and mono. What we needed was reversioned audio that is 100% stereo-compatible when downmixed using these algorithms, and we quickly learned that some tools were better than others.
A History Of The Upmix Products
I first did an upmix plugin shootout for Sound on Sound back in August 2007. At that point, we had 4 plugins at our disposal…
Waves S360 Surround Imager, which is technically not a real upmix plugin; it is really a panner tool, but in the early days, it sufficed as an upmix tool, too.
Cycling 74 Upmix - you had to use an RTAS wrapper plugin to access this plugin in Pro Tools.
TC Electronic Unwrap TDM (Released in 2006, this plug-in is a software version of the Unwrap algorithm from TC Electronic’s System 6000 hardware processor)
SRS Circle Surround Decoder (Xtract) (In 2012, DTS, Inc. acquired SRS Labs.)
In 2008, Soundfield released their UPM-1 hardware, which many broadcasters, including Sky, SIS Live and NDR, adopted as an easy and reliable means of generating broadcast-quality 5.1 surround sound from a stereo mix. In the same year, Waves released their UM225 (5.0) and UM226 (5.1) upmix plugins.
In August 2013, I reviewed the ADL Penteo 3 Pro plugin, which was the first upmix plugin that offered 100% compatibility when the upmix was downmixed back to stereo.
In November 2013, I asked, Where Are We With Stereo To 5.1 Upmix Plug-ins? At that point, we had six options…
Soundfield UPM-1 plugin, which was released in 2010 and I reviewed in 2012.
TC Electronic TC 6000 Series Hardware Unwrap software, but now only available on either the TC Electronic System 6000 or UpCon hardware platforms, as TC Electronic chose not to move the UnWrap TDM plugin across to the AAX plugin format.
Auro Technologies Auro-Matic Pro
Iosono Anymix Pro plugin (now part of Encircled Audio), which I reviewed in 2013.
Maggot Software (now The Cargo Cult) Spanner was released in 2012 and updated to version 2 in 2013. Like the Waves 360 Imager, this is strictly speaking a panner product, but we include it here because people do use it as an upmixing tool.
DTS Upmix plugin (The original plugin from DTS, not the Waves version, which came later) also didn’t make the transition to the AAX format.
In 2014, Auro Technologies updated their Auro-Matic Pro to version 2, and ADL updated their Penteo 3 Pro to Penteo 4 Pro.
In 2015, ADL (now known as PerfectSurround) released Penteo 7 Pro, which I reviewed and awarded our Editors Choice award. In the same year, Nugen Audio joined the upmix market and released Halo Upmix, ready for IBC 2015.
In 2016, Waves released the DTS Neural Collection, which we also reviewed in 2016. This suite of 3 plugins contains the Waves DTS Neural Surround UpMix plugin. Nugen Audio released a Dolby Atmos compatible version of their Halo Upmix plugin in the same year, working hard to make sure that their Halo Upmix plug-in would also give a convincing upmix of a full stereo mix with dialog and easily switch from Source to UpMix to Downmix to check compatibility.
In 2017, we undertook our own upmix shootout comparing the ADL Penteo 7 Pro, Nugen Audio Halo Upmix and Waves UM226 plugins. The results of the blind shootout showed that Penteo 7 Pro won by a significant margin. You can read more about the details and conclusions of this shootout in our article Shootout Results - The Best Upmix Plug-ins - Which Is Your Favourite?
By 2019, we had Dolby Atmos versions of the two main players in the upmixing world. As well as Nugen Audio Halo Upmix, 2019 also brought the Penteo Pro 16 from PerfectSurround (formerly ADL), which I reviewed and awarded our Editor’s Choice Award.
The Need For Downmixing
Before surround, the only downmixing we needed to consider was stereo to mono and making sure our mixes were mono-compatible. If, at any point in the delivery chain, we needed to create a mono mix from the left and right channels, we could be confident that the mono mix would be compatible with the stereo mix and elements wouldn’t disappear in the downmix to mono.
When surround came along, first LCRS with Dolby Pro Logic and then 5.1, we needed to be able to reversion our 5.1 mixes to produce variants from LCRS to stereo and mono.
With the introduction of 7.1, things became even more complicated. For example, a feature film mixed in 7.1 could include some or all of the following delivery requirements…
7.1 Theatrical Printmaster
5.1 Theatrical Printmaster
2.0 Stereo Theatrical Printmaster
Music and Effects mixes (fully filled) in 7.1, 5.1 and stereo
5.1 TV mix
5.1 TV M&E mix
Dialogue, music and effects stems in 7.1, 5.1 and stereo, sometimes with both Theatrical and TV versions.
This list is just an example of some of the most common requirements. However, it can become much more complex, making reversioning even more demanding.
A History Of The Downmix Products
With the adoption of surround formats, especially in broadcasting, we also needed ways of taking mixes completed in surround and reversioning them into stereo and mono without having to remix them. Content can be delivered to the end user in surround, with the consumer's hardware required to take the 5.1 mix and downmix into stereo or mono. As a result, a series of downmix coefficients were developed.
They are based on the standard 5.1 to 2.0 downmix, often referred to as LoRo (Left only/Right only). The Lo output is created by adding Left, plus Center (at –3dB), plus Left surround (at –3dB), and the Ro output is created similarly by adding Right, plus Center (at –3dB), plus Right surround (at –3dB). This downmix equation is sometimes called an ITU Downmix and is fully stereo and mono-compatible with few side effects. Please note that with this downmix model, the LFE channel is discarded. The LFE channel carries (or should only carry) low-frequency information that is of little use to stereo or mono speakers because the LFE channel bandwidth is limited to 120Hz, a bit too low for most small speakers to reproduce accurately. Consequently, it is important to remember that stereo and mono listeners will not hear any audio routed to the LFE channel.
As the list of deliverables increased, professionals undertaking reversioning needed tools to undertake the corresponding downmixing, which over the years produced a range of downmixing plugins.
One of the first downmix plugins was part of the Waves 360 bundle, released in the late 1990s, the M360 Mixdown plugin, with presets to produce mono, stereo, LCR and LCRS downmixes from a 5.1 mix.
It wasn’t until 2011, with the release of Pro Tools 10, that Avid had a factory-supplied downmix plugin, the Downmixer.
Maggot Software (now The Cargo Cult) released Spanner in 2012 and updated to version 2 in 2013. As we have already mentioned, Spanner is, strictly speaking, a panning tool, but we include it here because it is also used as a downmixing tool.
In 2016, Waves released the DTS Neural Collection, which we also reviewed in 2016. This suite of three plugins contains the Waves DTS Neural Surround DownMix plugin.
In 2017, Nugen Audio released the Halo Downmix plugin. This plugin was designed by the team at Nugen Audio for downmixing feature-film or 5.1 mixes to stereo, with controls for relative levels, timing, and direct vs. ambient sound balance allow fine-tuning, delivering reversioned downmixes that are no longer limited by typical in-the-box coefficients-based processes.
Ambisonics Reversioning
Another immersive format that is now becoming important with 360 video and games is Ambisonics, so having the ability to reversion immersive audio to and from Ambisonics formats is becoming essential. Nugen Audio’s 3d Extension for Halo upmix offers up to 3rd-order Ambisonics support and Perfect Surround offers support for up to 7th-order Ambisonics with the Penteo Pro+ upmix and downmix plugin.
The Challenges Of Backwards Compatibility
When audio professionals upmix and downmix content, they face the challenges of delivering backwards compatibility, and it is this area that highlights which upmix and downmix products stand out.
The reality is that not all upmixing and downmixing products are equal, and my advice, coming from a broadcast background, is to consider those products that have backward compatibility front and centre in their design. Products like PerfectSuround Penteo Pro and Nugen Audio Halo Upmix and Downmix have compatibility monitoring built into the algorithms and their graphical user interface. In fact, I would go as far as to say that if a reversioning tool doesn’t emphasise its backward compatibility abilities, it probably doesn’t deliver this requirement very well, if at all.
The Number Of Variants Explodes With Immersive Audio
While we were dealing with 5.1 and 7.1, upmixing and downmixing were relatively straightforward until immersive audio came on the scene. Immersive audio formats are surround formats with height information, requiring speakers above and around the listener. The number of formats exploded with the release of immersive formats like Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D.
In 2016, Nugen Audio released a Dolby Atmos compatible version of their Halo Upmix plugin in the same year, working hard to make sure that their Halo Upmix plug-in would also give a convincing upmix of a full stereo mix with dialog and easily switch from Source to UpMix to Downmix to check compatibility.
In 2018, Nugen Audio released the 3D Immersive Extension to their Halo Downmix plugin, adding the capability to downmix 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos bed tracks to 7.1, 5.1 and stereo.
Although, from the get-go, the Penteo plugin is designed to produce reversioned files that were completely compatible with the original stereo content when downmixed, it wasn’t until Penteo 16 Pro was released in 2019 that the Penteo plugin could handle both upmixing and downmixing in the same plugin. As a result, at the end of 2019, I awarded the Penteo 16 Pro plugin my Product Of The Year.
For me, the core ethos of the Penteo range through the years, from Penteo 3 to Pento 4 and then Penteo 7 and Penteo 16 and now Penteo v6, is that the design of their upmixing engine always gives an upmix that will be transparent and compatible when downmixed. There is no point in having a great sounding upmix if, when it is downmixed, it sounds crap. The reality of what we do, especially in broadcast and OTT, is that our immersive mixes must work when downmixed all the way back through to stereo, binaural and mono, as the majority of our audience won’t have a full immersive speaker rig to enjoy all the fruits of our labours. The downmix compatibility is one of the main reasons I like Penteo so much, and then, add to that, the simple interface and an excellent natural, unforced immersive sound, and you have a winner.
In November 2019, Penteo 16 Pro could upmix ANY format to ANY format and downmix ANY format to ANY format between stereo Atmos 9.1.6 and 3rd-order Ambisonics, switching formats on the fly without needing to re-initiate the plugin, with the aim of making audio reversioning as easy as possible. Now with Penteo v6, it supports more gaming formats, including Octophonic 8ch Cube, Sony 360RA 16.0 and hybrid Atmos 7.0.7 and the Ambisonics support has been extended from 3rd order up to 7th order.
Reversioning Supercedes Upmixing and Downmixing
With the introduction of immersive formats, including Dolby Atmos, Auro 3D, and Ambisonics, we find ourselves moving beyond just upmixing and downmixing, where typically we would start or finish with stereo, to a fully flexible reversioning workflow with a significant increase in challenges, which could include some or all of the following…
Downmix compatibility is a key measure of quality.
The need for creative controls to reversion with 100% downmix compatibility
An explosion of new commercial formats with 1, 2, or 3 height levels means that we are now reaching more than 60 different formats.
There is a need to continue working with legacy formats like LtRt / LCRS and converting them to modern formats.
With the explosion in immersive audio in gaming, Ambisonics is now in wide usage, extending through to 7th-order Ambisonics.
It would be beneficial if your reversioning tools could offer direct binaural rendering, enabling users to hear what an immersive mix will sound like when listening through a pair of earphones.
Other Examples Of Reversioning
So far in this article, we have concentrated on audio reversioning based on changes in channel count, like upmixing stereo sound effects to 5.1 or downmixing a Dolby Atmos film mix to 5.1, for broadcast, which will also maybe downmixed to stereo and mono in consumer’s hardware. But there are many other situations where, as audio professionals, we need to reversion the audio we are creating.
Howard Karp, MPSE, reached out to me to say…
“I've been using the term "re-versioning" since about 2004. It encompasses over 20 standard workflows. It's much, much more than just up-mixing and down-mixing. It's every other version that's created other than the original version. Furthermore, IMDb considers a lot of sound restoration and re-mastering as re-versioning even though it's an added step to the original version (OV).”
Thank you, Howard, for this and for your help in compiling this list…
Audio Restoration - Restoration (pure-ist clean up from best sources) and Re-mastering (restoration with added audio to fill out surrounds or tightening of legacy loose sync)
Broadcast Edits - This involves taking the original version (OV), editing for a broadcast duration and inserting commercial breaks when required.
Censorship - When a film has offensive language, censored versions need to be produced to deal with the offensive dialogue. This can include the use of beeps, muting segments, adding gibberish, and using ADR with softer language.
There are also airline cuts where the studios would edit out content that would potentially be too stressful for passengers to watch on a flight. The picture editor would provide a new cut, with the removed portions of scenes, The reversioning process would produce a conform to 3 more languages, with all versions downmixed to stereo.
Filled M&E (Music and Effects) - This is usually undertaken to prepare clean stems as part of the foreign language versions and includes creating new foley tracks to replace foley embedded in the dialogue tracks.
Foreign Language Dubbing - Often referred to as ‘foreigns’, this includes preparing, recording and editing the script and then mixing it into the OV, whether it's a simple music and effects mix or more complex stems, which can then be used by foreign language production houses to dub content into different languages, where the thorny issue of dipped or undipped stems raises its ugly head.
Loudness And Peak To Loudness Changes - These can include remixing the original theatrical mix with a reduced dynamic range for broadcast and streaming channels or simply reversioning the OV to comply with broadcast delivery specs. Reversioning broadcast mixes for online platforms, with products like LM-Correct from Nugen Audio, to change both the loudness spec but also the loudness range to suit the delivery requirements of the alternative reversions.
EBU R128 - Sometimes referred to as an Eastern hemisphere level compliance version.
ATSC A/85 - Sometimes referred to as a Western hemisphere level compliance version.
‘YouTube mixes’ - Delivered with a target loudness of -14 LUFS, requiring heavy limiting and dynamic remixing to achieve a smaller peak-to-loudness ratio.
Theatrical to Home Theatre - Altering surround and dialogue levels as well as issues like changing from horn tweeters to soft dome tweeters and the changes to a mix because the speakers are so much closer in a broadcast mix compared to a theatrical mix
Downmixing - Required when it is necessary to remix higher track configurations with careful dynamic compensation.
Matrixing - Creating legacy versions in matrix formats, including Dolby Stereo and LtRt for Dolby Pro Logic.
Alternate Versions
A lot of these came to prominence when DVDs were popular and include…
Description - Adding VO for a visually impaired audience.
Commentaries - Adding VO’s and dipping OV.
Extended Cuts - Editing and adding extra scenes that were taken out of the OV.
International cuts - Editing scenes to accommodate the requirements of different territories.
Director’s cuts - Editing and adding extra scenes as well as the voiceover.
What’s your greatest challenge when doing audio reversioning?
We asked several audio professionals about the challenges they face in their daily work regarding reversioning audio content. Here is a selection of their comments…
Steve DeMott
It’s common to have to provide several versions of a project when done. For a music project, this could mean the approved mix along with a TV Mix (no vocals), Vocals up/down, as well as any number of alternates (drums & bass, acoustic instrument, etc). For a Post project, this usually means the approved 5.1 mix, stereo downmix, stereo downmix at YouTube level, and all my stems (DX, SFX, MX, M&E, plus any ALTs, etc.).
I came up with clever ways to get all my reversioning handled in my templates without having to jump through hoops each time. It was complicated to set up, but it’s been a staple of my template for years. I do it through the clever use of bus sends that hit a bunch of tracks that are my final deliverables. The setup of these templates was complicated, but Pro Tools is amazingly flexible & there is usually a way to get what you want. The details of the routing is more than I can cover quickly, but I will say that properly labelling everything is huge in being able to make changes/updates to how you do things. It also means a lot of time in the I/O Settings window, but it pays off in a big way once you have it done.
Tom Lowe
A few years ago, I was asked to record the English version of dialogue for a short animated film, ‘Mary and the 7 Dwarfs’. The studio, Nukufilm from Estonia, is well regarded in the Baltic and Nordic regions, and their films have been entered into several international film festivals and tend to do well.
With this in mind, and to get the broadest possible audience without relying on subtitles, all their films are dubbed into English, as the Estonian version is produced for the domestic audience, and to help with funding from Estonian backers. I was tasked with recording the film's only voice in English, directing the session, and making sure the English script made sense. A literal translation from Estonian doesn’t always work, and sometimes we’d record a line but change it for the second take to something that worked better.
When we had an online call with the director and played him all the recordings, his immediate reaction was, “You’re more Maria than Maria” (Maria was her name in the Estonian version) – in other words, the English actor portrayed his character closer to his original vision than the original Estonian actor. There were other changes too, such as instead of having their own voice as in the Estonian version, each dwarf no longer spoke but instead had Mary say something as they introduced themselves, which was how the director had initially envisioned it being.
With all the international festivals and screenings showing the English version, this became the de facto standard version of the film and has been seen by far more people than the Estonian version, despite initially being made as the “foreign version.”
Howard Bargroff
These days, I tend to do everything natively in whatever format I’m delivering for, so I haven’t really done any re-versioning for years. And if we need to change format for re-delivery, we tend to remix to optimise.
Mike Greenberg
I don’t often get called upon to do reversioning of older material or even newer material, but when I do, it’s usually to upmix some mono or stereo elements to 5.1 surround. Once in a while, I’ll get asked to conform a short film to broadcast specs and even create wider elements from a mono source.
In these cases, I tend to go to a few favourite plugins. If I’m upmixing anything to 5.1 from a stereo source, I like to try and get the source stems if possible. This makes it a lot easier and cleaner way to achieve an upmix. If the stems aren’t available, then I’ll try to use Penteo 16 Pro. I find this does the job rather well for upmixing music to 5.1 and above. In some instances, I’ll go to Nugen Halo for the job, but I find that Penteo’s surround channels in an upmix tend to be a lot less digitally mangled, for lack of a better term. If neither of those plugins works well, I’ll just send the stereo source to a surround reverb and blend in the surround channels of the reverb with the left and right source channels.
For the dialog, if the source is stereo, I’ll assess the stem to see if it has any stereo content. Usually, it’s just a dual mono track. For the latter, I’ll just take one side of the stem and keep it dead centre. If there are any production effects in the stem that need panning, I’ll cut them out of the stem, if possible, and toss them onto a PFX track for proper panning and placement. I’ll also add in any natural reverbs if need be for the the wider sound field.
If I need to upmix a mono source to stereo or wider, I’ll usually go with Waves PS22 mono track enhancer. I don’t particularly love doing this, but if I have to, I’ll tread lightly and maybe add just a touch of reverb to the source.
If any older material needs to be cleaned up or de-noised, I’ll usually go to Izotope RX. Spectral Repair is an excellent tool for really diving in and removing noise and artifacts when a global noise reduction can’t. Lately, I’ve been using DxRevive Pro to restore old archive footage that wasn’t recorded well. It does a fantastic job restoring frequencies and rebuilding what wasn’t there in the first place. I have to be careful, though, because restoring too well takes away from the archival aspect of the footage, in my opinion. I get the best result with DxRevive Pro when I use the four-band setting and adjust accordingly.
I'll generally stick with Nugen plugins for overall level adjustment to broadcast spec LKFS (US) or others. Nugen VisLM and LMCorrect do a great job measuring and converting to specific loudness specs without tampering with the overall sonic quality. I don’t have to do much more tweaking with the original stems or material since I don’t always have the luxury of returning to the original mix. Usually, time is the most significant factor here. These types of jobs usually don’t carry a hefty budget. Therefore, I need to spend my time efficiently to achieve an acceptable result. It’s a delicate balance between time and what works to get a sonically approved mix.
That’s about it in a nutshell, a combination of these, or just one or two of these practices, usually gets the job done in an efficient way with a reasonable outcome.
Howard Karp, MPSE
I've been using the term "re-versioning" since about 2004. It encompasses over 20 standard workflows, maybe even 30+. It's much, much more than just up-mixing and down-mixing. It's every other version that's created other than the original version. Furthermore, IMDb considers a lot of sound restoration and re-mastering as reversioning even though it's an added step to the OV.
You don't necessarily alter the main feature, but editorial and mix work of these smaller bits were usually done by re-versioning teams. Featurettes, outtakes, gag reels, etc. I remember doing interstitials for The Simpsons that were less than 2 seconds long (just Homer saying "d'oh!"), but they had to be synced to timelines of 3 different framerates, encoded and delivered to authoring.
When I was involved in the re-versioning for the 2nd Anchorman feature. Due to so many territories having different issues with the content of the movie, I believe there were about 12 different picture cuts (maybe even more).
Damian Kearns
The greatest challenge I encounter reversioning TV shows or films occurs when I inherit a mix session from another engineer. It can take quite a bit of time to wade through someone else’s buss structure, and it’s often the case I have to create new busses for deliverables that weren’t part of the original session’s delivery requirements. My usual workflow is to sort out the busses first, remove/refine or replace any non-ITU-compliant downmix channels, and then look to see what sort of upmixing might be helpful or necessary. I apply my upmixing to each stem rather than over a whole mix. This allows me to fine-tune my upmixers for music, ambiences, and specific SFX independently of each other.
If I need to conform, I’ll ask for video and audio-only EDLs separately. My main tool for conforming from an old version of a picture to the new version is Matchbox by The Cargo Cult. Sometimes, I’m not supplied with EDLs, so Matchbox’s ability to compare old and new video files has come in handy.
Once I’m properly bussed and conformed, I play through the entire mix and I don’t shy away from remixing, re-editing, adding SFX elements or even a little Foley when necessary. If new content is added, I’ll tackle that as well and make sure the new stuff references material used in the old cut so everything feels seamless. I tend to try to add some SFX that are cut specifically to augment the rear channels only so that the surround image feels lush; anything from specific car passes (front to back, back to front etc.) to birds (sitting in a specific rear speaker) usually helps sell the mix”.
Sam Castleton
I find many challenges when reversioning. For example, in my nearfield mixes that have theatrical screenings, the two main challenges are the way the dialogue responds to horn speakers and the way the 5.1 pans in theatres. I find going from dome tweeters to horns affects the dialogue quite significantly around the high mid frequencies; the transition tends to make the dialogue sound ‘honky’. Using a multiband compressor to tame the peaks in that range helps. The 5.1 field is also quite different. In a home setup, the rear speakers are quite literally behind you, so anything that pans front>rear or rear>front has a lot of defined movement. However, in theatre arrays, I find only the front third hears this panning as it was on the nearfield mix. So I tend to pan more aggressively in a theatre to achieve the same sense of motion. Depending on the mix, the same can also be said for L>R/R>L, I tend to reign in this side panning when I check my nearfield mixes on headphones - where panning is far more exaggerated than in the room (given that they are then more akin to side surrounds). So for theatrical mixes, this L>R/R>L panning often benefits from new placement on the screen.
The main downmix issue I have is going from 5.1/7.1 (anything .1) to stereo. If you have elements that rely on the LFE, it goes without saying that the impact is lost in stereo. A dedicated sub-speaker is impossible to reproduce. But there are ways to help this downmix. Firstly, I avoid the dreaded muted LFE downmix format. Secondly, I have the LFE downmix fader set higher than most when I can. This isn’t to achieve the same impact. It’s to make sure sound information isn’t lost in the mix where previously it existed. Lastly, I address the issue at the source, so I may get it working in stereo first, then adjust LFE to taste or use upper or lower harmonic plugins to bring sound information into each mix. Plugins that add harmonics are particularly interesting in this regard, <100hz FX that are loud in 5.1 can now be more audible in the 2.0 mix or on smaller speakers.
Stuart Newman
When it comes to audio reversioning - I’ve 20 years of experience in this, and the one constant battle has been receiving undipped stems! A lot of engineers deliver their mix stems as ‘dipped’, and as you know, languages are not all the same length, so with dipped music, you’re screwed, and it’s not gonna be pretty expanding dipped music to fill the gap. Other than that, please just keep EVERYTHING that is language-specific in the dialogue stem and anything that is not (grunts, screams, whistles) in the fx stem. You can save a huugggeee amount of time not revoicing grunts and laughs.
Audio Reversioning
As this journey through audio production history shows, the need to revert audio from one format to another has existed since the introduction of stereo, with the number of formats growing as well.
However, with the introduction of immersive formats, including Ambisonics, audio reversioning has outgrown the simple use of upmixing and downmixing plugins, including the ability to reversion complex audio content without having to remix from the original content. This guarantees full backward compatibility and allows for matching the various delivery specs required by all the different content publishers.
In the modern world of professional audio production, the ability to adapt and transform audio content is not just valuable; it's essential. As a result, audio reversioning is a term we should all be getting used ti.