Pat (The Living Room Studios) asked a question.
Dolby Atmos Music workflow in 9.1.4 without hardware-based speaker calibration/room correction. Is it possible?
Having been toiling on this for a few months now but I keep running in circles.
My goal is to provide the best Atmos Music experience for our clients. Both in mixing/mastering Atmos but also producing in Atmos, which I think is the future of recorded music!!
That is why when we started the design we decided to build a 9.1.4 system. The wides lend themselves excellently to spread guitars to for example and make them sound even more impactful yet not mess with the front image too much.
Unfortunately—though we already have the extra speakers and enough I/O—with our current setup it seems we cannot use the wides since Logic, with the built-in renderer, only outputs 7.1.4.
Using DAPS we could do it, but:
1. The panner won’t work (not sure if doing an object based routing with auxes would solve this . . .)
2. There is no place to put Sonarworks in the chain, and DAPS does not support calibration profiles and neither contains speaker delays and EQ, etc.
I realize DAMS supports calibration profiles but it is a lot of extra unnecessary cost since it requires an extra computer with Dante, etc.—yes, I am aware of the Virtual Dante thing but still this setup requires a Dante interface—and it really seems to be beyond our scope—for example we don’t need 3 additional DAPS licenses—and even if we are able to resell those it would not be the easiest thing).
Another “solution” would be to invest in Pro Tools, not our DAW of choice but we might need it anyway for compatibility with clients’ projects, but, still, I run into the same issue as above. No way to run the calibration profiles from Sonarworks.
Since Sonarworks, or any company right now, is not yet systemwide—Sonarworks says they will be in early 2023 but they were saying the same thing in 2022—the only way to run speaker calibration is through the Sonarworks plugin on the Master Bus. Which works great, but fails on Logic’s limitation (currently) of 7.1.4
Any thoughts/suggestions??? We'd love to setup our system in a 9.1.4 configuration.
@AdamP (Dolby Labs) @BennettS (Dolby Labs)
My goal is to provide the best Atmos Music experience for our clients. Both in mixing/mastering Atmos but also producing in Atmos, which I think is the future of recorded music!!
That is why when we started the design we decided to build a 9.1.4 system. The wides lend themselves excellently to spread guitars to for example and make them sound even more impactful yet not mess with the front image too much.
Unfortunately—though we already have the extra speakers and enough I/O—with our current setup it seems we cannot use the wides since Logic, with the built-in renderer, only outputs 7.1.4.
Using DAPS we could do it, but:
1. The panner won’t work (not sure if doing an object based routing with auxes would solve this . . .)
2. There is no place to put Sonarworks in the chain, and DAPS does not support calibration profiles and neither contains speaker delays and EQ, etc.
I realize DAMS supports calibration profiles but it is a lot of extra unnecessary cost since it requires an extra computer with Dante, etc.—yes, I am aware of the Virtual Dante thing but still this setup requires a Dante interface—and it really seems to be beyond our scope—for example we don’t need 3 additional DAPS licenses—and even if we are able to resell those it would not be the easiest thing).
Another “solution” would be to invest in Pro Tools, not our DAW of choice but we might need it anyway for compatibility with clients’ projects, but, still, I run into the same issue as above. No way to run the calibration profiles from Sonarworks.
Since Sonarworks, or any company right now, is not yet systemwide—Sonarworks says they will be in early 2023 but they were saying the same thing in 2022—the only way to run speaker calibration is through the Sonarworks plugin on the Master Bus. Which works great, but fails on Logic’s limitation (currently) of 7.1.4
Any thoughts/suggestions??? We'd love to setup our system in a 9.1.4 configuration.
@AdamP (Dolby Labs) @BennettS (Dolby Labs)
I understand the dilemma and this something that the product manager for the renderer is aware of as well. The Atmos Music Panner Plug-in can work with Logic Pro if it is run in Rosetta mode for now. As you note that only solves part of your problem. Were you to go to Pro Tools and use a MTRX interface I believe the DADMAN software can use Sonarworks Ref ID profiles. Solutions are under consideration but I can't speculate on when they may come to fruition. For now it is difficult to get to where you want to be with 9.1.4 without investing in additional hardware and software.
Best,
Adam
So, the only solution for us now is a software solution. Primarily the Systemwide update from Sonarworks (and/or a potential Logic Pro update to cover monitoring over 7.1.4 which might or might not happen!). Best of both worlds really--at least that's what my current thoughts are--is for Sonarworks to release their Multichannel systemwide update which would then allow us to use the Dolby Renderer AND get speaker calibration systemwide before hitting the DA.
Patience is a virtue . . .