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Composing directly in 5.1/ 7.1 / Atmos... the 2021-2022 Thread!

IvanP

IvanP

Senior Member
Hi! First of all, Best wishes for a new year full of nice projects and free of pandemic related issues!

May I ask how many of you are programming, composing for media directly using a 5.1 template? With Atmos and surround being basically the new norm in TV Platforms and 90% of any Media project I've done since last year, I am thinking into finally switching into at least a full 5.1 Sampled based template VS Stereo.

How many of you (besides Remote Control based setups - EDIT meaning they have been doing this for years now :P - ) are doing mockups and composing to picture in 5.1 (or 7.1, Atmos, etc) ? Considering that any surround mix will be done from scratch in Pro Tools later, I'm wondering if I'm just late to the party or if most of you still compose in a Stereo environment, given that cue review for approval will still be done in a Stereo based rendered .mov or similar.

Thank you and happy new year!

Ivan
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I‘m about 2 years in 5.1 Surround. And just recently upgraded to 7.1 and then swiftly to Atmos, actually only 7.1.2.
It’s great fun, it’s really a joy to work in and hear your composition and productions in surround/immersive.
But mainly I do it for the joy of it. Reality is still, that your work is most likely consumed in Stereo or Mono than anything else. If you are smart with setting up your template and you are wise with your placement decisions the downmixes work in any format. Nobody has time to do a separate Stereo, 5.1, 7.1, Atmos mix. At least at my (low) level. For me it just slightly increased the time it takes to finish a cue, I can justify it with the fun I have with it.

I did 2 TV movies this year, one was Stereo, one in 5.1. But the music was delivered in Stereo stems.

Also did a student film and was responsible for the sound/foley/music and final sound mix in 7.1.

So there seems to be some demand. But they don’t pay extra for it, again not at very high level in the industry. Still studying at the Conservatorium. So take everything with a grain of salt.
In my experience sounddesign is more in need of surround than music.

I often do sound as side “hustle” to get the composition gig. I don’t know if it would be that good of an idea if you only compose and don’t find any enjoyment in the enhanced sound.

From a business perspective at my stage it was big investment that doesn’t pay of. I hope the experience and skill will pay of in the long term.

Another thing about the whole Atmos and immersive world is that it completely changes the rules of mixing in some ways. It’s really exiting as everyone is trying to figure out how to mix in Atmos. Besides how to set up the Dolby Atmos render, there is almost no information on how to mix in this format. It’s like the wild west again. I like that, Stereo feels so boring to me now.

On the other hand, I had the director of the previously mentioned student film in my studio for the final mix. I switched between 7.1 and Stereo. He couldn’t hear the difference… so yeah… Consumers don’t really care. And to be honest my sound system for my beamer was dirt cheap and only one monitor is working for over one year. I live together with a Composer/Producer, nobody cared to buy a replacement. That might be because all our money is in the studio.

Really excited to hear the experience of others members of this forum.
 
Thank you for your nice answer, Nils! Totally agree with that you say...I'm always mixing everything with an external mixer, so until now it didn't really made a difference between composing in Stereo VS Surround.

But after 2 projects I did for platforms changed their delivery into Atmos (which is an incredibly difficult system to mix Btw...) and after having seen a few Setups at Remote Control with full 5.1 for mockuping and composing (or recent "Home Studio Atmos updates" for some AAA composers) I was wondering if I was missing something on my own by sticking with Stereo.

Not that I would keep mixing in my writing room (which is fairly treated acoustically but I'm just a terrible mixer and will always leave this to professionals in their much better rooms or studios)...but it's true that the few surround tries I have done actually make a difference in how you perceive "mockup" space and perception of cues...(not to mention real 5.1 recordings, of course).

With clients coming in in actively to the studio before the pandemic it would make sense for the "wow" factor, but nowadays everybody is working remotely and I only had a few clients visiting this year...so much for demoing in Surround I guess.
 
IvanP said:
Thank you for your nice answer, Nils! Totally agree with that you say...I'm always mixing everything with an external mixer, so until now it didn't really made a difference between composing in Stereo VS Surround.

But after 2 projects I did for platforms changed their delivery into Atmos (which is an incredibly difficult system to mix Btw...) and after having seen a few Setups at Remote Control with full 5.1 for mockuping and composing (or recent "Home Studio Atmos updates" for some AAA composers) I was wondering if I was missing something on my own by sticking with Stereo.

Not that I would keep mixing in my writing room (which is fairly treated acoustically but I'm just a terrible mixer and will always leave this to professionals in their much better rooms or studios)...but it's true that the few surround tries I have done actually make a difference in how you perceive "mockup" space and perception of cues...(not to mention real 5.1 recordings, of course).

With clients coming in in actively to the studio before the pandemic it would make sense for the "wow" factor, but nowadays everybody is working remotely and I only had a few clients visiting this year...so much for demoing in Surround I guess.
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The lack of any other comments also kind of answers the question.
 
I am trying to dip into Dolby Atmos myself and I find it as previously said: the wild west. There is the very steep learning curve and trying to make sense of all the technologies that need to come together. But, I think, the real issue here is the initial investment.

First, there is the barier of entry: if you want to deliver any of your projects according to the official specs, you need to either buy a Mac as a second system, either buy an extremelly expensive PC from a Dolby authorised dealer (the PC system itself without the software is about £10k). See one example of authorised solution: (broken link removed)

If you look closely, most of their demos are in Avid ProTools Ultimate (80$/month or permanent licence £2200). I am running Nuendo 11. I am waiting to see what Nuendo 12 is going to bring to the table before buying a - most likely - second hand Mac and the Dolby Atmos Production Tools. The Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite is about $1k.

A good monitoring solution is already quite expensive in itself. Just going from a 2/2.1 setup to, ideally 7.1.4 for monitoring is a huge step-up. Dolby recommends as a minimum 5.1.4 from the same line of speakers.

Just my example: before starting, I had a pair of Focals Trio 6BE and a Focal Sub (very nice for stereo monitoring) and, as a spare set on my second system, a pair of Focal Shape Twins. I have spoken with a few people that have more experience than me in surround/Atmos and, ideally, I will have to buy another 8 x Focal Solo 6 Be (£6500) - just to have the same sound. As I have managed to find an ex-demo Focal Solo 6 Be and I now have a (hybrid) 5.1 system, I will probably dish out initially another £1100 for 4 x Focal Shape 40 and later another £520 for another pair. Not mentioning stands, ceiling mounts, cables. Just the placement of those in my room is going to be a nightmare. As soon as I will go to 5.1.4, I will have to upgrade my interface (or buy another one and connect via ADAT: Scarlett OctoPre £370). That comes to another £2k (Thomann prices) as the cheap version for me.

If you want to start producing and monitoring content for games and other VR productions, you need something like Waves Virtual Room and Waves NX head tracker £100 or the Waves 360° Ambisonics Tools £320. Supposedly the latest version of Apple Airpods Pro have integrated head tracking but I haven't seen yet if they are integrated with anything in terms of production.

And this is before adding production/mixing plugins that support 5.1.4 or more channel configurations.

How many here have that kind of budget just to start off.

And this is just skimming the surface.
 
Well, I guess HZ wrote a while back that he likes to work in surround, no doubt he's working in Atmos by now (or whatever's next). Given how cool his scores sound, can't knock it.

I can see advantages, but there are a few drawbacks:

1. Most people review tracks in stereo; arguably therefore it makes sense to mix to the way the track will be auditioned. It's hard enough to guess what laptop speakers or ear buds or whatever they might use to review music we spend hours mixing and shaping. If you ever hear back a comment like, "I don't hear much bass," or "it doesn't sound that powerful," that could stem (get it? "stem?") from their use of tiny speakers to play the track back.

2. Can we really get good enough at it so it's a plus, instead of potentially a negative? It's hard to mix even in stereo, let alone surround. And that's leaving aside all the stems you have to print for delivery, LUFS and all that stuff -- I find it hard enough to write music without then losing even more sleep to learn and accurately hew to final delivery requirements for a dub stage.

3. Does it include the live recordings or is it going to have to be remixed anyway? Personally if I'm spending money (mine or theirs) to record an orchestra, I'm also spending money on an engineer who does this for a living. I do see it as part of my job to make my demos sound cool, but not part of my job to edit entrances and trim out noise from live-recorded tracks. Even engineers themselves have assistants who perform some of those tasks.

4. Money; It's not like you're going to set this up once and it'll never change. What about changes to standards like Atmos or some other thing that comes along? OS upgrades -- all that? Subscriptions, new "must-have" plugins or hardware? It could be pretty expensive to get it all up and running, but also expensive to keep it up to spec.

Don't get me wrong, it sounds fun and it's really entertaining to hear one's music in surround. But without a staff to deal with it and maintain it, I foresee more hassle than fun.
 
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Playing with the 5.1 setup that I have now is certainly very enjoyable. The hassle to set it up when I will go to 7.1.4, that's another story.

The cherry on the cake: Windows does not play nicely with Dolby Atmos and the only way to listen to your mastering outside your DAW is via a Dolby Atmos A/V receiver connected via HDMI which means your monitoring setup will have to have something like the SPL MC16 in between which in itself is crazy.

Windows -> DAW -> Audio interface -> balanced XLR -> SPL MC16 -> balanced XLR -> 7.1.4 speaker setup
Windows -> software media player -> GPU -> HDMI -> Dolby Atmos A/V receiver -> SPL MC16 -> balanced XLR -> 7.1.4 speaker setup

Fun!

P.S. I will let you have a look at the prices of a 7.1.4 Dolby Receiver and a SPL MC16. ;)
 
A 360° microphone for recording ambience is around £1k.
From what I understand, the rest can be recorded on close mics and rooms mics as usual and you can then mix and match as necessary. For additional realism you can create your own IR.
 
I'm also about to experiment with it just for fun and out of curiosity only using headphones (since I really enjoy listening to the binaural headphone Atmos versions of songs on Tidal, and also for the aforementioned wild west feel ;) ). I do believe that it's quite a revolution and is here to stay, because most people consume music on headphones, and Atmos can greatly enhance that experience. For some people the standard HRTF doesn't seem to do the trick, though. I'm sure there soon will be headphones that scan your ear or whatever and automatically create an individual HRTF for you. ;)

For those who already tried to produce directly in this format (I didn't dare to try it myself, yet):
  • How much does it increase the CPU and RAM footprint?
  • At least in Nuendo you are required to use a buffer size of 512, so that introduces more latency than I'm used to. How do you deal with that?
  • Do you prefer to use mono or stereo sound sources that you then pan and position within the 3dimensional space, or do you prefer to make the sound source itself 3dimensional by using multiple mics that you pan across the space (if available)?
  • Do you use your normal stereo mixing plugins (EQ, compressor, etc.) to first treat the stereo/mono sound source before positioning it within the 3 dimensions, or do you only treat the 3dimensional sound after it has been positioned by only using Atmos/surround compatible plugins?

I feel it makes me want to commit the individual sound sources (instruments) to mono and first treat those mono sources, before I place them all around me - at least in a busy arrangement. Would that be a very bad idea or just a bad idea? :D On the contrary, if I only used a piano, for example. I'd prefer to have many different mic signals and pan those around me.

Need to test it. I have no idea what I'm talking about... exciting times! :)
 
A few more bits, but as I said, I am trying to figure it out, so take it with a big grain of salt. For the moment, since I don't do anything that is close to "interactive experience", my approach is to treat everything like a multichannel mix (surround) and "sprinkle" things on top that are positioned in 3D space. That will probably be more precise once I get on a 5.1.4 setup.

But this is really for my own entertainment, I have never published anything, I don't make money out of it so my incentives are very different from somebody that needs to make a living.

Now, with regards to headphones, I have tried the demos for Dolby for headphones, DTS:X, Windows Sonic and Steinbergs' Immerse with VST AmbiDecoder and I am yet to be fully convinced. That can be due to either me being in the category of bad HRTF, either I might have been spoiled by my monitoring setup, headphones (Focal Clear Mg Pro) and my previous experiences in a few places that had trully high-end audio setups with proper sound proofing. The difference between listening to even an upmix from stereo to 5.1 on my current set of speakers and the Focal Clear Mg Pro is notable. But that might be just the open-back headphones...

For the moment my best experience of spatial audio has been a demo of a Jean-Michel Jarre limited edition release on a 250k Euros system. I would really like to get my own hands on that disc but I don't even know the name of it. I was working in IT support at the time and they were preparing a demo of the sound system for some big names. Got about 15 minutes before I was hurried out.
 
I've been working in Atmos for the past couple of years and before that, forever in surround.

I do mostly music and sound design for art installations and all my gigs are done in one of the immersive audio formats. As for the odd documentary and indie film gigs, it's minimum 5.1. I haven't done a stereo gig in years.
 
Mishabou said:
I've been working in Atmos for the past couple of years and before that, forever in surround.

I do mostly music and sound design for art installations and all my gigs are done in one of the immersive audio formats. As for the odd documentary and indie film gigs, it's minimum 5.1. I haven't done a stereo gig in years.
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What’s your preferred setup when you’ve got various possible project formats? Do you work in Atmos and downmix? Or in Ambisonics and then downmix to Atmos?

Any preferred tools? I’ve been playing with the IEM Ambisonics suite inside MetaPlugin as a spatialization tool, but MetaPlugin’s limitations mean 4th-order Ambisonics is the max at the moment
 
Thanks a lot for all your answers and input! As for Atmos / Ambisonic headphones, I haven't been impressed myself. It's merely a simulation of what true Atmos is, but I do imagine that there's an advantage over stereo listening, for example, of a Movie on an iPad with proper "Atmos" ready headphones.

The thing is, until very recently, all of my sampled based scores for TV had always been delivered in Stereo, since I've never been asked otherwise. Recorded scores, obviously, had a more proper budget and 5.1 / 7.1 / Atmos deliveries have been the norm.

As for the RC studios I've had the chance to visit a few times, they all were Streaming samples in Surround...I've always thought it was a way to impress clients (fool of me, I never dared to ask...) but maybe it was a common thing in order to print directly Stems for sampled based scores with proper 5.1 files and mixed inside the Daw for projects that either for budget reasons or time of delivery didn't have the needs / possibility of doing the mix in PT from scratch.

Going the 7.1 or Atmos route is definitely more complicated in terms of setup and mixing, but I found that using samples in 5.1 is not that hard to do and, mixing wise, it seems almost like an advantage, as the soundstage appears wider and, specially, more clear than working in 2.1.

And, if Stereo is the final delivery nonetheless, the DAW will take care of the automatic downmix if needed.

That's why I was wondering how many people are / where using at least a 5.1 outside the guys at Remote C.
 
My writing template is in 7.1.2 now, as my sample libraries are all multimic except for some solo stuff.

I deliver 5.1, and charge extra for an ATMOS mix. Demos are sent in stereo.

Also, everyone with airpods pro, 3rd gen airpods, airpods max, and an iPhone/iPad/AppleTV now has the ability to stream immersive audio/ATMOS mixes. Home theater systems everywhere are being upgraded to support ATMOS.

There’s this lingering myth about theaters in po-dunk midwestern towns having blown LFEs, channels out, and not upgraded to ATMOS that simply isn’t true anymore. The 90s were a long time ago and it’s just not the case that the theaters outside of LA suck.

Go to Moore Oklahoma, Cape Girardeau Missouri, Mentor Ohio, Lincoln Nebraska… the theaters there are WAY nicer than the shit in LA. And you can bring booze INTO the theater.

I get other pros like Meyerson or Sands will strongly advise against aggressive panning to surrounds, or dedicating some sounds for the LFE only. No offense to either of them, but I do not think they have seen a movie in a theater outside of the coasts in a long time. 😉

The infrastructure is there for composers to fully commit to immersive on projects big and small. Composers make sure their instruments are in tune even though most people can’t hear a few cents sharp or flat… so composers should approach immersive with the same dedication to that aspect of the craft.
 
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Stephen Limbaugh said:
My writing template is in 7.1.2 now, as my sample libraries are all multimic except for some solo stuff.
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Thanks! Wanna share how do you route your mics in a surround environment? do you use directly the surround mics in the Surround outputs channels or do you load/play them all at once in the full 5.1 out in order to have the fullest surround image and then use a surround panner to give a little more spice to the front, rear, etc ?

Thanks!
 
IvanP said:
Thanks! Wanna share how do you route your mics in a surround environment? do you use directly the surround mics in the Surround outputs channels or do you load/play them all at once in the full 5.1 out in order to have the fullest surround image and then use a surround panner to give a little more spice to the front, rear, etc ?

Thanks!
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Routed as objects actually 😁… and generally positioned in front of the listener, except for the high surrounds which are in the top back corners.

VSL has a number of vids on their Youtube channel about routing and managing their mic positions.

Also, Fabfilter just updated their limiter and ProQ3 to handle ATMOS channels.
 
In my opinion- Hats off to Apple for adding immersive sound to Logic. Will be interesting to see how this gets used ( more likely abused )

I think it will be difficult to convince many lo to mid budget productions to go Atmos for score. Atmos for the final audio sound yes, but not score, much less licensed music.

I still think quad is a good compromise for score, for the time being…
 
I'm writing in 4.1, does that count? I figured it's probably worth the investment and DAW resources if that's where we're headed, even though right now most people will listen to your work in stereo and your stems will get tweaked, remixed at the dub stage anyway.

Apart from that it's just loads of fun to mess about with.
 
quickbrownf0x said:
I'm writing in 4.1, does that count? I figured it's probably worth the investment and DAW resources if that's where we're headed, even though right now most people will listen to your work in stereo and your stems will get tweaked, remixed at the dub stage anyway.

Apart from that it's just loads of fun to mess about with.
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Yep, I think 4.1 is the most cost-effective way for a composer to dip into that world and deliver for dubbing stages.
 
Mishabou said:
I haven't done a stereo gig in years.
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I expect anyone doing any kind of paid work has to deliver in at least 5.1, if not 7.1 these days, and that's been true for what? 10 years? 15?

But that's not the same as working in surround day-in, day-out. I know you know that, @Mishabou

Personally, I don't want to be the person setting up and maintaining all that. It seems that every client has different delivery specs and I don't want to be the person fiddling with all that. I have an engineer do that, even if it's mostly or completely in-the-box.
 
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