Dolby Atmos MP4 exports sound bad- what's going on?

What files dot you send to your clients for checking your Atmos mix ?
The question seem simple as long as it's plain .wav stereo or binaural files. But what if your client wants an immersive version to play on an AVR ?
Website : www.atmosmixer.com
Link to this video : kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZLJh2ysermGpac

[@ImmersiveAudioMixer]

UPDATE : I recently found the following video from Justin Gray, a mastering engineer from Canada where he explains at length many technical stuff about the internals of Atmos encoding. It's a long video but well worth the watch, especially the first half of it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJS9iIJ5gruejac

[@i.a.m-poornasrikarm]

Yes , the Dialnorm indeed will affect the Atmos decode . When you apply a Film Light compression , the DD+JOC encoder will apply an automatic Dialnorm based on what it registers it as "speech percentage" . This is both advantages and disadvantages . But if you are able to hack / find a workaround by making it read the speech percentage as maximum as possible your mix will automatically play louder on consumer devices . Simply mix lead vocals into the center channel or atleast you can do a M/S at the end of the your workflow to create Center . Unfortunately this can be also trade off for us , i can understand because most of us may not like the idea of putting things into center channel when it comes to music . But i do it anyways and always for various reasons . Mostly i tend to use a dedicated Dialouge object into the center channel speaker , even it's just an autotune . The other way is , we can also manually tweak the dialogue norm later using AWS Elemental media convert encoder to whatever percent we like . The more speech threshold percentage you will set there , the more loudness you get in the decode instantly ! Voila.....Very fun to play around with this setting if we are carefull However i dont recommend to do this , unless and until you are sure of how much volume you want to push it up ! ( Some of us might misuse this ) Dolby will fire me for sure 😬😅 Playing it loud means ofcourse the decoder will definitely will reduce the dynamics because there is also "transient processing + soft limiting" both being applied during the decode . This is one of the features of Atmos but is only implemented on the decoding chain , during mixing we are only offered with a soft limiter . So people will suggest to use a music light compression instead . It's up to us . But note that what ever be the integrated loudness , the Atmos mix during the decode will always reach a TP of -0.1 be it on headphones or loudspeakers ( once it's encoded into DD+JOC ) . The Dialnorm / speech percentage will change the integrated loudness to as loud as -12 too sometimes depending on the content while the actual Atmos mix reads it as -18 . Atmos restricts us to mix at very low Integrated because they have a way to boost our mix during the decode process . A dedicated transient processing is integrated into all kinds of Atmos decoders

[@Problembeing]

Btw, I have been scouring KZbin for MONTHS looking for anyone to talk about this issue, and so far you are the only one. It's been driving me so mad, I've embarrassingly had to put off a client as I cannot get the Dolby Mix exported properly and to soyund as it does through my headphones. I am furious!

[@DolbyAtmosMixing]

Good topic. What I have found works for me is to do a video screen capture of the binaural mix showing the renderer.

[@cesarbohorquez5575]

Hi Alex, I made a screencapture video but when I import it into protools it tells me that it could not complete the import because unable to read the metadata from the Quicktime video. I am using a Mac Studio and I did it in the Quicktime application. I am doing it wrong, in that case how is it done?. Saludos !

[@ERICDIZZYASMR]

Long time! Great to have you back!

[@SamHocking]

I believe for music, the dialnorm is actually written into the bitstream by the playback encoder based on the loudness measurement of the ADM, not via dianorm like the Dolby Media Encoder allows. Might be wrong, but that's my understanding. Hopefully Dolby one day provide a better music QC process for clients. Ideally, you just want somewhere you can upload the ADM and the user is streamed the music just as they would experience on Tidal with Android and then hopefully Apple provide a similar service for Apple Music and Apple Spatial playback.

[@Problembeing]

Not only does my Dolby Atmos mix (done in Logic Pro X) come out quiet on my 5.1 consumer cinema setup, but also the objects are coming from completely different places and at varying loudness. I really don't understand why Dolby integrates these things into DAWs and doesn't allow for proper mastering, and now I find we have to pay from their site for an external encoder?? What is the point? NB: Noiw I've gone to the Dolby wensite to look at the encoder and it isn't even available unless you are a trading company!! This is outrageous!

[@TechnoDad]

Hi! Great video! I was curious if the Dolby Media Encoder will be able to take a Dolby Atmos Masterfile (ADM BWF) and conver it to MP4? Please let me know!

[@ImmersiveAudioMixer]

Thank you for the comment! Yes, for Dolby Atmos input, you can use several file types: .atmos, .adm, .damf, .mxf, or .wav :-)

[@MrAchris10]

Well spoken, I have made the request for a free or a least widely accessible playback app to Dolby as well.

[@bobybayo]

Welcome back! Very interesting topic. Agree with the "player" option for customers

[@studiovinden]

Very interesting! I've been toying with the idea of using my 5.1 home cinema as a way of referencing my Atmos mixes as this seems like it most resembles the discrete speaker mix version (as opposed to the stereo and binaural mixdown which I find to be quite lacking also in the professional Tidal Atmos mixes). I'm still in Atmos diapers but will definitely try this out ASAP. The Dolby software licensing also strikes me as weird and expensive. If Atmos is to be ubiquitous, wouldn't they benefit from more people (not only the high level pros) using their encoding software?

[@tomkogstad7773]

Thanks for highlighting this Patrice! From what I can see the Dolby Encoder is $400 (yearly lisence!) so we have to find another way of cranking the volume for client control. Can we just render the ADM file much higher to get the "normalized" MP4 we send off? (Obviously we go down to -18 for the proper file) The way Alex discribed the screen capture sounds good though - Could you do a video on this @DolbyAtmosMixing? 🙂 Thanks Patrice and Alex!

[@TonCorderoM]

Hello! Did Dolby contact you to tell you the price of the complete software? If yes, what’s the price? Thanks and nice video

[@QFXmusic]

Great video very interesting

[@Exalix]

On Marantz and Denon receivers, just set Loudness Management to OFF

[@iamyila]

so when you send off to Apple via a distro they fix this for you? It's really a minefield of probblems delivering consistency from commercial studios.

[@klausdietrich2362]

Important topic - and an idea for a solution. Would be more than nice to have a player for the clients. Hope Dolby makes it soon...

[@davidcottrell1308]

make it...or Sony will....c'mon Dolby.....!!

[@Smfstonemetalfire]

🤘

[@allopakora4855]

At 6:53 is the thing to solve the problem.

[@kostorchmixer]

Thank you!

[@cutupmusic]

Media Encoder is $400/year 😬😬😬

[@davidcottrell1308]

uh..NO.