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Post by audiospecific on Feb 14, 2024 8:02:52 GMT -6
I feel your pain dude! I go back & forth between thinking it's cool to cursing the whole thing's existence. One thing that you may want to try is the immersive virtual studio software. You can set it up to monitor Apple Spatial Audio, Dolby Binaural Renderer and the original stereo mix. www.steinberg.net/immerse-virtual-studio/The thing is about an expensive or "proper" Atmos rig is that most all of the work I'm hearing that was done on those set ups doesn't sound good in Apple Music either so my philosophy of trying to really push myself on headphones isn't just to save money, I think that may be the actual best way to do this when it's all said and done. I'll check out the Steinberg plugin, thanks! I havn't gotten that far yet, but started looking for plugins to let me monitor the Apple Spacial Audio render. That looks like a good option. I'm on the lookout for a good deal on some Airpods as well, I want to start exploring all of that soon.
A few years back I experimented and recorded everything in stereo using all kinds of methods and made a song. The result was it sounded weak i a car stereo, but huge on a surround sound system. I'll have to find that track so I can play it on an Atmos system.
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Post by andersmv on Feb 14, 2024 8:29:45 GMT -6
I'll check out the Steinberg plugin, thanks! I havn't gotten that far yet, but started looking for plugins to let me monitor the Apple Spacial Audio render. That looks like a good option. I'm on the lookout for a good deal on some Airpods as well, I want to start exploring all of that soon.
A few years back I experimented and recorded everything in stereo using all kinds of methods and made a song. The result was it sounded weak i a car stereo, but huge on a surround sound system. I'll have to find that track so I can play it on an Atmos system.
I had similar results playing around with mic stuff in the Atmos binaural render. I made a make-shift ambisonic mic and got the best results combining that with a mono mic on things. I kept the binaural data "off" on my front L-C-R speakers, so panning the mono mic up front gives the same results as you would get in stereo. Then I blended in a bit of the ambisonic mic spread out over the room and its a noticable difference in the Atmos binaural render compared to doing the A to B to Stereo with the Ambisonic. I ran into a lot of phase issues, but I'm pretty certain it had to do with my make shift binaural mic. If you don't get those capsule placements exactly right, the Ambisonic decoding isn't going to work well. Good enough for me to mess around and try some things though. Soyuz is going to send me their new Ambisonic mic in the next month or so to play around with, I'm going to dig in deep and do a lot of playing around when that gets here. Planning on doing a whole video series on Atmos experiments and stuff, it should be fun. Everyone seems to be hyper focused on remixing for Atmos might now because they think it's easy money. I don't really care about that part of it, I just want to see if it's possible to make good/better (or at least "different") music specifically for the Atmos format. Again, it's feeling like an uphill battle at this point, but I'm curious enough to put some major effort into it and see what happens. Worse case scenario I end up killing another dream and can move on with life  |
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Post by Tbone81 on Feb 14, 2024 8:56:39 GMT -6
Whether it’s a fad or not, one cool side effect of the Atmos push is that manufacturers are starting to make some really cool monitor controllers. Audient just released their new adat interface/Atmos controller. It has sonar works integration and programmable bass management. The cool thing is that it seems you can setup the speaker outs in any configuration. I hope this becomes a trend…I’d love to have three sets of speakers, plus sub, plus headphone outs all with different sonar works profiles on each speaker set/combo (or non at all). With the ability to route the sub to any speaker combo, and control the crossover. The only thing the Audient interface is missing is a remote.
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Post by andersmv on Feb 14, 2024 9:01:34 GMT -6
Whether it’s a fad or not, one cool side effect of the Atmos push is that manufacturers are starting to make some really cool monitor controllers. Audient just released their new adat interface/Atmos controller. It has sonar works integration and programmable bass management. The cool thing is that it seems you can setup the speaker outs in any configuration. I hope this becomes a trend…I’d love to have three sets of speakers, plus sub, plus headphone outs all with different sonar works profiles on each speaker set/combo (or non at all). With the ability to route the sub to any speaker combo, and control the crossover. The only thing the Audient interface is missing is a remote. I've been following the Oria, it looks great. I'm a believer in SonorWorks, was planning on using it anyway with an Atmos setup if I go that route. It's great that it's built in. I think Audient said that you can't run multiple speaker profiles at the same time, so you would still need to switch profiles when switching speakers. It also looks like they've got a "remote" app for the iPad, so that's at least something. It wouldn't be hard for them to implement a wireless controller at some point with a few knobs on it that control those parameters digitally. At the price point they keep at, I can see them releasing a physical unit eventually for a few hundred dollars. |
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Post by Quint on Feb 14, 2024 11:30:07 GMT -6
They should focus on getting atmos mixes not to sound like hot ass first. So like cold ass? |
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Feb 14, 2024 14:11:37 GMT -6
I’ve been doing a lot of messing around on headphones the last week, especially some weird recording ideas for mic placements and stuff to try and play into the binaural renderer. Made some really cool headway, lots of “this still sounds like crap” moments 😂. Like most of you are pointing out in here, I don’t think any of this matters if we can’t figure out a way to make this sound good on headphones. My biggest realization was mixing strait to the bed (instead of objects) and varying the binaural distance settings for various speaker sets. I was getting much better results keeping the front speakers as “off” (which maintained all your normal stereo translation if you kept most stuff at the front) and varying placement on some things like room mics. Although I got some good results, I still have two big concerns: 1: None of this matters because even if I “figure this out” 😂 and get great results, the binaural render is still going to sound different on Apple Music since they don’t take into account any of the binaural distance data and use their own proprietary binaural render. It’s their whole spacial audio gimmick. Getting those binaural distance settings right on the bed speakers was a big thing to me and for the first time, I was getting results that I thought were moving me in the right direction. If I lean on that being a big part of how I record and mix stuff for Atmos, it’s never going to translate on Apple Music. Only Tidal and Amazon… 2: At some point, the binaural render algorithm is going to be improved (or at least changed). What happens then? It’s hypothetical, because we have no idea. I know it’s not what any of us want to hear, but that’s why it’s important that you have a speaker setup as well. If Dolbys intention is to keep improving the binaural render to make it as close to speakers in the room, relying solely on headphones isn’t best practice or doing clients any favors if you’re going to offer this service professionally. Number 2 is going to open up a can of worm, I’m sure… I’m not stating that as gospel, that’s just my thought process as of now. It could turn out that I’m blowing the whole binaural render thing out of proportion and the “updates” over time aren’t going to be drastic. I’m “pro headphone” if we’re going to start making camps. I think ultimately it’s the most important part of making this work. I want to put more time and effort into figuring this out and focusing on the headphone aspect, but at the same time, again, Apple is sticking to their guns and is going to muck up the ONE part of this thing that needed to be absolutely universal in the process. It’s a joke that they were even able to get certified as “Atmos” while using their own proprietary render. The more I get into this, the more apparent it is that Dolby doesn’t give a crap and is in it for the money. They should have told Apple to go pound sand and had an Atmos vs Spacial brawl. I don’t know… The biggest frustration is that regardless of all of that, it doesn’t mean any of this is going away because it’s fundamentally flawed. It just means a lot more future headaches for all of us. This whole debacle is the new “mono translation” conundrum essentially, just much more complex. I’m waiting to hear the Atmos Binaural render and some noise cancellation systems don’t like each other. |
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Post by andersmv on Feb 14, 2024 15:11:30 GMT -6
I’ve been doing a lot of messing around on headphones the last week, especially some weird recording ideas for mic placements and stuff to try and play into the binaural renderer. Made some really cool headway, lots of “this still sounds like crap” moments 😂. Like most of you are pointing out in here, I don’t think any of this matters if we can’t figure out a way to make this sound good on headphones. My biggest realization was mixing strait to the bed (instead of objects) and varying the binaural distance settings for various speaker sets. I was getting much better results keeping the front speakers as “off” (which maintained all your normal stereo translation if you kept most stuff at the front) and varying placement on some things like room mics. Although I got some good results, I still have two big concerns: 1: None of this matters because even if I “figure this out” 😂 and get great results, the binaural render is still going to sound different on Apple Music since they don’t take into account any of the binaural distance data and use their own proprietary binaural render. It’s their whole spacial audio gimmick. Getting those binaural distance settings right on the bed speakers was a big thing to me and for the first time, I was getting results that I thought were moving me in the right direction. If I lean on that being a big part of how I record and mix stuff for Atmos, it’s never going to translate on Apple Music. Only Tidal and Amazon… 2: At some point, the binaural render algorithm is going to be improved (or at least changed). What happens then? It’s hypothetical, because we have no idea. I know it’s not what any of us want to hear, but that’s why it’s important that you have a speaker setup as well. If Dolbys intention is to keep improving the binaural render to make it as close to speakers in the room, relying solely on headphones isn’t best practice or doing clients any favors if you’re going to offer this service professionally. Number 2 is going to open up a can of worm, I’m sure… I’m not stating that as gospel, that’s just my thought process as of now. It could turn out that I’m blowing the whole binaural render thing out of proportion and the “updates” over time aren’t going to be drastic. I’m “pro headphone” if we’re going to start making camps. I think ultimately it’s the most important part of making this work. I want to put more time and effort into figuring this out and focusing on the headphone aspect, but at the same time, again, Apple is sticking to their guns and is going to muck up the ONE part of this thing that needed to be absolutely universal in the process. It’s a joke that they were even able to get certified as “Atmos” while using their own proprietary render. The more I get into this, the more apparent it is that Dolby doesn’t give a crap and is in it for the money. They should have told Apple to go pound sand and had an Atmos vs Spacial brawl. I don’t know… The biggest frustration is that regardless of all of that, it doesn’t mean any of this is going away because it’s fundamentally flawed. It just means a lot more future headaches for all of us. This whole debacle is the new “mono translation” conundrum essentially, just much more complex. I’m waiting to hear the Atmos Binaural render and some noise cancellation systems don’t like each other. That's a factor I haven't considered. More things to think about.... lol |
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Post by andersmv on Feb 17, 2024 7:15:12 GMT -6
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Post by seawell on Feb 17, 2024 11:40:46 GMT -6
Wow…that is really something! The unfortunate part of Apple emerging as the leader here is that out of all the immersive formats I think Spatial Audio sounds the worst by a good margin. It’s like some newb threw a weird widener & room reverb on everything. When you can A/B quickly between Atmos & Spatial it’s pretty wild how different they are. If Apple would’ve just offered straight up Atmos in Apple Music, I bet this whole thing would’ve gone much better for immersive mixed music so far. The problem is that a lot of engineers are mixing stuff that sounds killer on their Atmos speaker rig but then the majority of listeners end up with Apple lathering on Spatial & what they hear is VERY different than what the engineer intended. |
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Post by audiospecific on Feb 18, 2024 6:28:22 GMT -6
Examining some of these Atmos mixes makes me think that its matrix surround with digital delay points and its just panning from those points. like Lt height pan from left = Center + digital delayed Left (Even pan point) to Left+center digital delayed (odd pan point)
It makes me think there is a way to translate it to circuit functions, like a matrix mixer, and send a mono stem or track into it and it mix the matrix into stereo. The electronic puzzle of varying the matrix points would be the design hurtle translating this to hardware. Which I'm thinking its the difference between AC3 and AC4.
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