Dolby Atmos?

[wbgs_radio]

I am wondering can I use Dolby Atmos, With reaper and if so how?

[wbgs_radio]

Originally Posted by Reynaud

The Dolby tools with the RMU don't support Reaper yet.

At the moment your only software options are:
ProTools HD 12.8
Nuendo 7 or 8
DaVinci Resolve 14
Pyramix 11 (to a point)

Will reaper support this in the feature?

[wbgs_radio]

Originally Posted by Reynaud

Dolby apparently plans to support other systems such as Reaper, but I have no idea what the Timeline is.

Thanks a lot for the info.

[davetbass]

ATMOS is part of a Sontaran plot to poison the atmosphere.

[Rick O'Shay]

You can use ReaSurround to create a 7.1.2 mix. (7.1.4 being the recommended consumer delivery format) Automating movement in ReaSurround would be an excessive amount of work, as this isn't what it was designed for.

Yeah, wait for an official Atmos plugin. If it's anything like the one used in ProTools, it will be LOTS more intuitive.

[ReaDave]

You can produce a Dolby Atmos mix from an Ambisonic mix if you have the right decoder. In fact, you can output pretty much anything from an Ambisonic mix without needing to do dedicated mixes.
Since switching over to third order Ambisonics for all my mixes, I've found that producing other formats such as mono, stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 256.24.2 (ok, I made that one up) tends to work better than if I started in those other formats to begin with. You're basically producing an Ambisonic mix which sets up a soundfield on the chosen speaker configuration. A soundfield on stereo speakers sounds better than a native panned mix for the same format.

[ReaDave]

Originally Posted by Reynaud

How does the decoder communicate with the RMU?

Anything else is just a standard fixed multichannel configuration, which is not the same thing as a compliant Atmos deliverable.

To be honest, I hadn't looked into it until now. I haven't done any Atmos work myself but you are right.
The reason I mentioned it is because the decoder plugins I use from Blue Ripple Sound include a decoder labelled "Dolby Atmos". However, upon checking, they do have specific information on that decoder and it doesn't produce metadata and object information. It is primarily used for creating a bed to layer the objects on later.

More info here...
http://www.blueripplesound.com/story/new-712-support

[RobinGShore]

Originally Posted by Reynaud

How does the decoder communicate with the RMU?

It doesn't. I think what ReaDave means is that you can use Ambisonics to decode a 10-channel (7.1.2) "bed track" that will be compatible with Atmos. Obviously for object panning you would need the proper hardware/software from Dolby, which currently doesn't support use with Reaper

[jpanderson80]

Originally Posted by ReaDave

A soundfield on stereo speakers sounds better than a native panned mix for the same format.

Dave, are you saying that a song mixed in Ambisonic format and bounced to stereo will sound more natural/better than if the song were mixed in stereo to begin with? I'm very curious about this.

Jeremy

[ReaDave]

Originally Posted by jpanderson80

Dave, are you saying that a song mixed in Ambisonic format and bounced to stereo will sound more natural/better than if the song were mixed in stereo to begin with? I'm very curious about this.

Jeremy

Yep. That is exactly what I am saying. I wasn't expecting such a difference but it would be hard for me to go back to mixing in stereo now. Even mono downmixes sound better (levels are much more consistent and phase issues are far fewer).
I first noticed this when producing a 5.1 output from an Ambisonic mix of a song I had previously mixed in 5.1. The new 5.1 downmix from the Ambisonic mix sounds FAR more spacious and is much more detailed basically because what is being heard is an Ambisonic soundfield created for a specific speaker arrangement.

[jpanderson80]

Originally Posted by ReaDave

Yep. That is exactly what I am saying. I wasn't expecting such a difference but it would be hard for me to go back to mixing in stereo now. Even mono downmixes sound better (levels are much more consistent and phase issues are far fewer).
I first noticed this when producing a 5.1 output from an Ambisonic mix of a song I had previously mixed in 5.1. The new 5.1 downmix from the Ambisonic mix sounds FAR more spacious and is much more detailed basically because what is being heard is an Ambisonic soundfield created for a specific speaker arrangement.

Dave, your PM box is full. Do you have any links for someone like me who is interested in hearing or exploring this Ambisonic idea further? I'm all for better sound.

[ReaDave]

Originally Posted by jpanderson80

Dave, your PM box is full. Do you have any links for someone like me who is interested in hearing or exploring this Ambisonic idea further? I'm all for better sound.

Originally Posted by doppelganger

Can you tell more about how it works in few words, please? I'm not familiar with it at all.
Do you record with some specific equipment, mics or else?
Or you record with usual eqipment into WAV, then encode it somehow into that format?
Or you just process usual WAV recording with Blue Ripple Sound plugins or what?

I have a website I have recently set up dedicated to Ambisonics and the music I've recorded with it. It is very early days so far and I plan to do a lot more with this site. It's a little disorganized at present but I have a few links to more info about Ambisonics and how to use it.
I have one song uploaded that I've mixed in third order Ambisonics and am working on my biggest album project to date. This is also being mixed in third order and will be uploaded once complete.

I currently have all the Ambisonic stuff on my synth website and am contemplating setting up either a dedicated site for it or just tidying up what is there already. Not sure which way I'll go with it yet.

Anyway, the direct url to the Ambisonic section is via www.AmbisonicMusic.com

[spindlebox]

Originally Posted by ReaDave

You can produce a Dolby Atmos mix from an Ambisonic mix if you have the right decoder. In fact, you can output pretty much anything from an Ambisonic mix without needing to do dedicated mixes.
Since switching over to third order Ambisonics for all my mixes, I've found that producing other formats such as mono, stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 256.24.2 (ok, I made that one up) tends to work better than if I started in those other formats to begin with. You're basically producing an Ambisonic mix which sets up a soundfield on the chosen speaker configuration. A soundfield on stereo speakers sounds better than a native panned mix for the same format.

I realize this is an old thread. But I'm definitely interested in getting into this!!!

[ReaDave]

Originally Posted by spindlebox

I realize this is an old thread. But I'm definitely interested in getting into this!!!

Ambisonics is totally addictive! I'm using it pretty much exclusively now.
I still need to tidy up the Ambisonic section of my website though!

[matnoir]

Originally Posted by wbgs_radio

I am wondering can I use Dolby Atmos, With reaper and if so how?

Hi!

I just made a quick video showing how to setup the Dolby Production Suite to use it with Reaper, it works very well.

However, there's a slight problem that I would like to overcome which is that Reaper does not seem able to handle more than 64 audio channels I/O while the Atmos renderer can use up to 130 channels.

This is not too much of a problem for music use, but I discovered that the preferred way to sync the Atmos Renderer with Reaper is to use LTC rather than MTC as I show in the video. The reason being that LTC is sample accurate when MTC is only frame accurate. But, the Atmos Renderer seems to expect LTC on channel 129 (channels 1-128 being used for audio content), so Reaper cannot feed it :-(

My video is at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5C7HIDMuY

Regards,
p@T

[plush2]

Originally Posted by matnoir

Hi!

I just made a quick video showing how to setup the Dolby Production Suite to use it with Reaper, it works very well.

However, there's a slight problem that I would like to overcome which is that Reaper does not seem able to handle more than 64 audio channels I/O while the Atmos renderer can use up to 130 channels.

This is not too much of a problem for music use, but I discovered that the preferred way to sync the Atmos Renderer with Reaper is to use LTC rather than MTC as I show in the video. The reason being that LTC is sample accurate when MTC is only frame accurate. But, the Atmos Renderer seems to expect LTC on channel 129 (channels 1-128 being used for audio content), so Reaper cannot feed it :-(

My video is at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5C7HIDMuY

Regards,
p@T

Thanks for putting this all together matnoir. The work is appreciated by those of us wanting to keep up with these changes. The netflix opensource material is a particularly useful resource I was not aware of. It's a shame the production suite is Mac only which precludes me from testing it.

This may be a bit off topic but you might have an answer. How do ADM and Atmos deliverables intersect (if at all)? Does Atmos deliver as an ADM as an option? I notice that a number of the above mentioned Netflix resources have ADM BWF deliverables and have been watching that toolkit develop for a while.

Thanks again for posting.

[jm duchenne]

Originally Posted by matnoir

However, there's a slight problem that I would like to overcome which is that Reaper does not seem able to handle more than 64 audio channels I/O while the Atmos renderer can use up to 130 channels.

Hi,
I don't know how you are linking Reaper with the Atmos Renderer, but the 64 channels limit is for the busses, tracks, plugins and audio files ... which represents a real problem for me too!
But you may get around it by using several hardware outputs in parallel. For example 1-64 for the first one and 65-128 for the second one, or just one for channel 130.
It works well with soundcards and ReaRoute too.
I guess that the limit might be 256 channels.

[matnoir]

Originally Posted by jm duchenne

Hi,
I don't know how you are linking Reaper with the Atmos Renderer, but the 64 channels limit is for the busses, tracks, plugins and audio files ... which represents a real problem for me too!
But you may get around it by using several hardware outputs in parallel. For example 1-64 for the first one and 65-128 for the second one, or just one for channel 130.
It works well with soundcards and ReaRoute too.
I guess that the limit might be 256 channels.

When using the Dolby Atmos Production Suite (i.e on the same computer than Reaper) the link is through a virtual audio device called Dolby Audio Bridge. At present time, this is the reason why this app is Mac only as there are difficulties for developing the same bridge with ASIO on Windows. They will overcome this eventually.

The high-end solution, know as the Mastering Suite, runs on a separate computer, Mac and Windows versions are available, and is on a Dante network.

For the rest, you are perfectly right, using the direct hardware outputs is the way to go. Who really needs using the master track in such a configuration anyway...

Have a nice week-end,
p@t

[matnoir]

Originally Posted by plush2

Thanks for putting this all together matnoir. The work is appreciated by those of us wanting to keep up with these changes. The netflix opensource material is a particularly useful resource I was not aware of. It's a shame the production suite is Mac only which precludes me from testing it.

This may be a bit off topic but you might have an answer. How do ADM and Atmos deliverables intersect (if at all)? Does Atmos deliver as an ADM as an option? I notice that a number of the above mentioned Netflix resources have ADM BWF deliverables and have been watching that toolkit develop for a while.

Thanks again for posting.

The Windows version will eventually be available. The high end version of the app, the Dolby Mastering Suite, runs fine on windows. They actually face problems for developing the ASIO version of the virtual device needed to link a DAW to the Dolby renderer.

When you record your final mix inside the renderer, it saves all information (audio + object metadata) in a .atmos file along with some xml files.

From then on, the renderer will allow you to export to any format, including ADM. For instance, if you publish music through Avid Play, they will allow the upload for ADM for Tidal and Amazon Music which are the two platforms able to stream Atmos encoded files at present time.

Have a nice week-end,
p@T

[krabbencutter]

Originally Posted by matnoir

The Windows version will eventually be available. The high end version of the app, the Dolby Mastering Suite, runs fine on windows. They actually face problems for developing the ASIO version of the virtual device needed to link a DAW to the Dolby renderer.

When you record your final mix inside the renderer, it saves all information (audio + object metadata) in a .atmos file along with some xml files.

From then on, the renderer will allow you to export to any format, including ADM. For instance, if you publish music through Avid Play, they will allow the upload for ADM for Tidal and Amazon Music which are the two platforms able to stream Atmos encoded files at present time.

Have a nice week-end,
p@T

Interesting to hear. There's a topic on the Dolby forums where a Dolby rep stated that there were currently no plans for a Windows port (albeit over a year ago) https://developerkb.dolby.com/suppor...cs/16000023816

And now that Nuendo 11 is on the way with fully integrated Atmos support on macOS *and* Windows (https://youtu.be/V8RYOBVsfSQ?t=885) I'm kinda suspecting that this might be Dolby's way forward. Integrating the Atmos renderer into third party DAWs gives them much more control and less things to worry about. But this also would mean, that Reaper users on Windows might never see any kind of Atmos support, because integrating Atmos like this involves very very large sums of money -.-

[matnoir]

Originally Posted by krabbencutter

Interesting to hear. There's a topic on the Dolby forums where a Dolby rep stated that there were currently no plans for a Windows port (albeit over a year ago) https://developerkb.dolby.com/suppor...cs/16000023816

And now that Nuendo 11 is on the way with fully integrated Atmos support on macOS *and* Windows (https://youtu.be/V8RYOBVsfSQ?t=885) I'm kinda suspecting that this might be Dolby's way forward. Integrating the Atmos renderer into third party DAWs gives them much more control and less things to worry about. But this also would mean, that Reaper users on Windows might never see any kind of Atmos support, because integrating Atmos like this involves very very large sums of money -.-

From what I understood (but I'm no Windows user, so please take this with a grain of salt), the Atmos renderer already exists for windows in the package they call the Mastering Suite, which is the high-end solution (for home entertainment, solution for movie production and theaters is different).

You can download it here : https://developer.dolby.com/tools-me...tes/downloads/

But, the Mastering Suite needs to run on a dedicated machine (Mac/Win) that receives and outputs audio via a Dante card.

The Mac only version is the lower priced Production Suite that allows the rendering app to run on the same computer than the daw, connecting the two via a virtual device. And creating such a virtual device was quite easy on the Mac using CoreAudio, but seems to be a challenge on Win with ASIO.

The "supported daws" such as PT, Nuendo and Pyramix only have the advantage of integrating a 3D Panner able to provide the Dolby Renderer with proper metadata for moving objects around. In other daws, such as Reaper, you have to use the (free) Dolby 3D panner VST plugin.

Avid have just announced that the current (or next) version of Pro Tools will allow you to render ADM BWF files straight from the daw without having to "record" them in the Dolby app.But since ADM is an open-source format, that's not so much of a challenge.

The BBC along with the EBU have also released the equivalent, developed specifically with and for Reaper : https://ear-production-suite.ebu.io/

Have a nice day,
p@T

[krabbencutter]

OMFG thanks for pointing me towards the EAR suite! That's absolutely amazing and I'll give it a try asap. Only downside for me is the missing realtime binaural monitoring (I don't have a 7.1.2 speaker setup). However there's already an accompanying "NGA Binaural renderer" for offline conversion and since both tools are very new, I'm hoping for a future update. In the meantime I might try out DearVR monitor.

[matnoir]

Originally Posted by krabbencutter

OMFG thanks for pointing me towards the EAR suite! That's absolutely amazing and I'll give it a try asap. Only downside for me is the missing realtime binaural monitoring (I don't have a 7.1.2 speaker setup). However there's already an accompanying "NGA Binaural renderer" for offline conversion and since both tools are very new, I'm hoping for a future update. In the meantime I might try out DearVR monitor.

You're more than welcome :-)

In the meantime, I had confirmation that Nuendo 11 indeed has a native integration of the Dolby renderer, but without the real-time binaural rendering nor some export formats.

Happy immersion ;-)

[paulo m]

Originally Posted by matnoir

The BBC along with the EBU have also released the equivalent, developed specifically with and for Reaper : https://ear-production-suite.ebu.io/

Have a nice day,
p@T

That´s really interesting. The GUI and workflow looks a bit like the Frauhofer MPEG-H tools.

I will try ASAP with Dear VR Monitor, as I also don´t have an immersive speaker setup and need the Binaural monitoring.

Thanks for posting it here. I did watch your videos on YT about setting up Reaper to the Dolby Atmos Renderer, really useful, thanks.

[Joystick]

Originally Posted by ReaDave

The new 5.1 downmix from the Ambisonic mix sounds FAR more spacious and is much more detailed basically because what is being heard is an Ambisonic soundfield created for a specific speaker arrangement.

First of all, nice explainer on the Reaper+Atmos video, kudos!

I can also confirm what you are claiming here, we started mixing our (SoundFellas Labs) music and ambience libraries that we sell to Unity store with HOA two years ago and the results are amazing.

Recently at SoundFellas Labs, we conducted a double-blind test with audiences of experienced and non-experienced listeners, to see the subjective perceived quality of various ambience recordings discreet channel recordings versus upmixed/downmixed versions of the same recordings through ambisonics and discreet surround VSTs. The clear winner was the ambisonics workflow as 60% of the listeners claimed a more immersive, clear, and precise representation of the environment, although in many cases the original discreet channel material was included in the listening session.

[olilarkin]

nice video @matnoir