Windows Binaural in Nuendo 11

Seeknap (CME) asked a question.

January 1, 2022 at 11:17 PM

Hi, i m on a windows Pc, using nuendo 11 with Native Renderer. To monitor in Binaural i was thinking to add a madi card with 64x64 in/out, loopback the signal of the madi out in the Madi in of the same system daw and buy a dolby license to run the windows renderer on the same pc along with Nuendo. In short Nuendo loaded with Madi driver that sends out from madi 64 channel of objects , loopback the madi in the same system and go to the dolby render loaded with driver madi input , and as output the headphone output of the same cards or another(on the same system).
The metadata will be sent to the renderer?
It is possible in the meanwhile? Also if yes , which license i have to buy to run this setup? A Daps or a Mastering Suite?
Thank you

Working With DAWs

Sam H (Self Employed)
5 years ago
DAPS is MacOS only, unfortunately. DAMS is available for Windows, but has to run on a separate computer to the DAW and far more expensive, so you'd be best just buying an old Mac Mini (good-enough for Andrew Scheps) and installing DAPS in order to monitor Dolby binaural from Nuendo.

The binaural metadata is what gets saved to the master file, I don't think it can be streamed with the loopback in real time the way you describe, although you won't need to with DAPS as binaural will be a monitoring mode then anyway.
There's nothing that special about Dolby Binaural (iphone users don't even receive that anyway). I use Davinci Resolve DAW which doesn't have Dolby binaural with it either. There are various binaural plugins that will take your Dolby bus with height channels and then binauralize it. Some of the better ones are DearVR Pro, Ircam HEar V3, although the best (most realistic for me) is probably Alan Meyerson's Immerse Visual Studio. This also comes with a feature to personalise your HRTF using an image of your ear, whereas most plugins use a generic HRTF as Dolby does. The only thing that will be missing is Dolby Atmos's Near, Mid, Far modes, but these can be emulated per object using near, mid, far sends to a reverb emulating the distance of the room walls. I assume this is probably convolution reverb, but there's not much info out there about what exactly near, mid far is, other than mid represents the object 1.5m away from the listener.
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- Seeknap (CME)
  5 years ago
  Daps is for mac , but the renderer can be downloaded also as pc windows version.(without dolby audio bridge and mac au plugins)
  Can i activate it (windows version) with a DAPS ilok license?
  I think the license is the same.
  
  To monitor dolby binaural in a separate mac required add 128 channels of input/output interfaces. Here because this workaround , looping back the madi channels.
  
  Using other binauralizer tools is interesting but not so precise as the dolby binaural one. Also if my customer want hear the precise binaural dolby decoding using only nuendo how sound on the digital stores he can t. (Even with convolution workaround and other binauralizer)
  
  If someone can tell me the precise answer will be wonderful.
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  - Sam H (Self Employed)
    5 years ago
    You've downloaded Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite I think. Both have the Dolby Atmos Renderer. If you're on Nuendo, I'm pretty sure you have the Immerse plugin built-in anyway for binaural monitoring, it's just not from the Nueldo Dolby Atmos Renderer it's via the Immerse plugin.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH3VviMm7SI
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Sam H (Self Employed)
5 years ago
Forgot to add. As far as I understnad it, the ilok licence for DAPS doesn't work for DAMS. DAMS licence is usually purchased from a reseller and nearly $1000 last time I looked. DAPS is much cheaper. I can't help with MADI loopback as I've never used it, but if you want to hear the Dolby Atmos Binaural Render on the same PC as the DAW, it can't be done afaik. I've not really noticed anything special with Dolby Atmos Binaural, isn't it just using a generic HRTF of a Neumann head. Dolby don't advice you make any decisions using Dolby Binaural, it's just there so engineers can carry on working when not in their studio on speakers. You're better using a binaural plugin you can actually tailor both HRTF and other parameters to match your Atmos room, or if no Atmos room, get your binaural settings to sound like Dolby's. I'm probably wrong, but isn't Dolby Binaural just a generic HRTF from a Neumann Head? Maybe someone here can help, because if you know what the HRTF Dolby implement is, you can then just use the same .sofa file in any 7.1.4 > binaural plugin that supports personalised HRTF I would assume??
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