Time to explain DOLBY ATMOS!

[@KohleAudioKult]

What do YOU think about ATMOS for Rock and Metal productions?

[@ed_weird]

It's not going to happen in the home recording environment, which is ever increasing in the modern day.

[@tiffanyflanagan1892]

I think the positional effects make the midrange sound weird and hollow. Every time I try to turn it on in my airpods, I turn it back off.

[@StevePhoenix]

To me it's mostly useless for music. Most people listen to music in 2 formats: recorded and live. Live music was, is and will be stereo (in fact it's mostly mono). If you want people to be immersed in a recording, you want (in my opinion) to remind them of those live shows. ATMOS doesn't do that, so it actually ruins immersion. Mass adoption is also a problem. Can't imagine most people are eager to have to buy minimum 8 speakers for the full ATMOS experience and even those who are fine with that run into the problem that the format involves MASSIVE file sizes. Compressed files do exist and are reasonably sized, but using immersive reverbs messes with channel positioning. And the expense for studios will be massive. In other words, it's poorly thought out, forced and, in my opinion, useless for music.

[@danymalsound]

@@tiffanyflanagan1892 yes! It's horrible

[@dillpereira250]

I didn't like the most rock and metal mixes I've heard. My impression is that they sounded without punch and aggression (especially in the mids), which is a characteristic of the genre. But it's really cool for pop, ambient and things like that. I think there is still a gap for plugin development and also the professionals need to develop new mixing methodologies to achieve good results that translate well into any type of format/setup. What I'm sure of is that whoever masters the technology at first, will make a lot of money, because after the first classic in atmos, all the other bands will want to do it.

[@joesalyers]

Hornet plugins has a Dolby Atmos "master buss" plugin called Hornet SAMP. EQ, compressor, Limiter & clipper, combo that will give you an option for quote "buss" processing in Atmos

[@KohleAudioKult]

I gotta look into that. Thanks! Have you tried it?

[@joesalyers]

@@KohleAudioKult Yea it work pretty well and the price is worth it since hornet always has sells!

[@pureventrue2357]

9:00 I JUST upgraded my phone & was listening to a few of my reference tracks out of curiousity because I was kind of impressed by how good the speakers sounded. I started listening to Language I: Intuition by The Contortionist & when those synth pads kicked in, I felt EXACTLY this. It felt like it was swirling around my head. Thank you so much, now I know why!

[@Kyp031]

Im looking forward to Devin Townsends work in Atmos.

[@blackeyed.]

looking forward to hear your mix! but does atmos sound as much coherent as a stereomix in a stereopair to you? does it have a same impact?

[@MrPsychoGuitar]

That whole concept sounds sooo cool. I can‘t wait to listen to some Music using ATMOS and try it out

[@grandmaenjoysmusic]

Well even without multi speaker setups I can see how mixing in 'virtual' space and then adapting to actual system on playback can reduce many translation problems and limitations we were dealing with all those years! Sounds cool to me, and already i am imagining endless possibilities, e.g. do a mix from a drummers perspective with drum kit all around you, or having spatial movement on things like guitar slides and so on. I would love it, however for home producer like me getting atmos compatible sounds quite unreachable in terms of hardware. We need some smart way around it :)

[@RolandDeschain1]

Adam!! Great to see him again. I miss his Reaper KZbin content.

[@no.mids.brando6458]

i feel like a lot of people are grossly underestimating the potential of this technology. for example, when you go to see a local band in a bar, your not listening to close miced guitars, your listening to the band in a room. being able to map 2 cranked guitar amps in a 3d space, ie at the front, and using an immersive reverb to recreate lo fi room reflections could be game changing. it seems we are on the cusp of a new era. stereo has been around for far too long, it is archaic atp.

[@KohleAudioKult]

I’m very surprised by the mix of negativity and misunderstanding. I see a lot of potential myself!

[@LekkerBlanka]

minimum speaker question is a key one

[@LekkerBlanka]

7.1.4

[@shaharbar]

@@LekkerBlanka 2

[@LekkerBlanka]

@@shaharbar i surrender

[@Durkhead]

1

[@alexeysmirnovguitar]

Great conversation, men! Makes ATMOS a little bit less mystical, at least for me. By the way, thanks a lot to Audient, I make most of my audio work using id4 and id14. Great people making great audio devices

[@KohleAudioKult]

T great to hear that. Demystifying was the whole idea of this video.

[@AlexGichevMusic]

Sick! Never knew why ATMOS was such a big deal, and how it was different from any other something point something surround sound system till now. Thanks! Can’t wait till it becomes more accessible to the average home recording person.

[@machinelabrecords6783]

Gracias,saludos desde Colombia

[@gregfender]

I’m not sure if I’d ever be able to afford a proper atmos setup but it sure looks like a lot of fun.

I don't see people investing in apple specific stuff, personnaly I hate Apple products. It could be usefull or great for movie mixing, but I don't see youtube changing their file system or spotify,, in the end consumers will decide. I don't think it'll ever be the main thing in music production though

[@rossbalch]

I think where Atmos works in Movies and Video Games is that you have that visual feedback that helps sell the illusion to your brain. In my experiments with ambisonics it sounded ok, but it never felt 3D and eventually just became a worse sounding version of stereo. I really can't see Atmos moving beyond being super niche in the music world. I just don't know many people who want it.

[@galladebutcooler8645]

LETZ GO

[@mgr_1138]

Adam! Good to see you again, looking sharp. Thx to Kohle for enlightening us.

[@KohleAudioKult]

He does!

[@hanswurst579]

not giving a shit, never gonna.

[@nitromeda]

For me, musical experience is heavily connected to the awareness I am able to keep up while listening. If I am not fully concentrated, even my not even eq-ed or mixed recordings (I am still a noob) sound pretty good. So are lo-fi black metal albums 😂

[@KreativeDevices]

Straight 🔥

[@dougleydorite]

Metal should be “in your face”, not immersive. Atmos seems useful for more cinematic musical type stuff

[@MrBikboi]

Highly genre dependant, but I mostly agree.

[@KohleAudioKult]

I know what you mean, but it highly drives on how you use it in the mix. You can easily leave 90% in front and just move the stuff out of the way that is supposed to side ambient or simply muffles the mix anyway.

[@Kyp031]

Subjective.

[@dougleydorite]

@ exactly how I view it. Maybe some day it will be worth the cost, complexities, and consumer playback variables to take that next step. Also, Sony 360 has a bottom dimension… Atmos is lacking for that reason alone

[@danymalsound]

I've never heard a metal atmos mix that sounded "right." It feels empty and hollow

[@LearnWithStephen]

Sounds like the Crypto of the audio processing world. Sheesh.

[@gregfender]

I can see this (atmos) being a thing in new cars whether people want it or not.

[@sricabla]

I can see Kohle is a little skeptical.

[@Celso_Luis]

Great video as always, Kristian! Man, it's so great to see you, a BLACK METAL guy, always interested in pushing the boundaries for music production!!! (especially in a genre that historically doesn't have the best reputation in that regard, let's be honest hahahaha) I got curious about something: while ATMOS seems amazing for its possibilities, I recently found out that TAYLOR SWIFT sold the most vinyl records last year. So it doesn't seem to be the niche market I thought it was before; looks like all kinds of music fans are becoming more interested in going back to being able to keep a tangible, PHYSICAL version of the music they love. Do you know if the people at Dolby have thought of something to make ATMOS compatible with any kind of physical medium? (I believe it wouldn't work with vinyl, right? Since it only seems to be capable of storing stereo information in its grooves)

[@KohleAudioKult]

I haven’t thought about that question. I’m sure our world be possible if there was a demand for it though. Thanks for the kind words!

[@limbophonic1]

So I assume the binaural mix is just a normal stereo file? If so can I buy download music in this form without the need for apple devices or special decoders

[@KohleAudioKult]

It’s never a normal stereo file. It just gets decoded for binaural playback by Apple Music or the Dolby encoder. But if you record that decoded signal it is a stereo signal of course. Hope that’s understandable. 😵‍💫

[@cernyviktor]

Dolby Atmos or other surround formats (like Ambisonics) were not really common in music, but are widely used in games (and I guess in cinema as well) for years or even decades. For games it makes a lot of sense, you can imagine these surround formats like a huge virtual 3D space where you can have sounds all around you (for games and cinema mostly where the camera is), these sounds are then played in your real space around you accordingly (e.g. an enemy is behind you and starts attacking you). For music, to be honest, I do not really see why would anyone want it to be in surround, for me it just does not make much sense for most genres. I can imagine it could be cool to have an entire symphonic orchestra mixed all over you, but this is the only example I can come up with right now. I feel like pushing stuff behind you or above you in a normal rock/metal mix would be more distracting than immersive, just my two cents :) We will see in a few years, I might be totally wrong about it.

[@ebbulk]

I like Adam, so knowledgable! Is he still doing his hop pole studios channel? I think I'm subscribed, but haven't seen any video's recently.

[@KohleAudioKult]

He’s great! He’s not doing videos for Audient exclusively now.

[@PSR_B1257]

Will all the outboard gear, not for tracking but for mixing be useless when it comes to mixing in Atmos? Like sending your whole mix through an analog mix bus compressor or something like that… I cannot imagine that mixing will go outside of “the box” to hit stereo devices if Atmos becomes a new mixing standard one day. Would be really interested in your thoughts about that. For everyone who has spend a ton of money and sold a kidney to afford expensive outboard gear… might be a hard time to realize that all this gear may find its end of use in the future. Hope for you that this won’t happen ✌🏻

[@KohleAudioKult]

I think people still make theitr stereo mixes (including the outboard) first. Then they export stems for the atmos mix. That's how you keep the sound of the outboard. At least that's what I did.

[@PSR_B1257]

@ thanks for your response! Looking forward to see your mixing video. Cheers

[@mirrorten]

Take courage, Kohle, you'll be fine with your first immersive mix. 🎶🤘 I've been using my Audient ORIA for a few months now, it's really great. The only thing is that the illuminated ORIA logo is way too bright, so I masked it with gaffa. 🙈

[@KohleAudioKult]

Thanks! I enjoyed it. I’ll be back with it soon!

[@rickard9294]

Do all decoders use the same filters, time effects (reverb/delay), etc so that we know that e.g. a downmixed binaural will sound the same from all manufacturers? If not I only see this as a toy and maybe device A sounds like I want it while on devices B and C it sounds weird.

[@georgyj111111]

Nonsense. Nobody has a decent setup to hear the full potential (I have and it can sound fantastic). On headphones and Sonos & Co it's not convincing at all. Every metal stereo mix sounds better on headphones than Atmos. Just my 2 cents, but I'm an old guy.

[@snowandcoal]

Is coaxical better for atmos setup than 2 or 3 ways?

[@KohleAudioKult]

I don’t think that’s an issue as long as all your drivers are in phase.

[@witte_reus]

looking forward to the atmos memes a couple years from now.

[@PaulEubanks]

Atmos as a superset of stereo which collapses down gracefully depending on the playback device sounds like a FANTASTIC musical advancement. The problem is, it doesn't work. It doesn't collapse down gracefully, and it always sounds worse. In theory it should also render down to binaural as well. The problem is, it doesn't. Not convincingly at least. The Atmos renderer tries to create distance and proximity of a sound source by altering the properties of volume, panning, and early room reverb reflections. Whatever metadata is attached to a track to create these effects of spatial placement by the Dolby Atmos renderer, sucks supremely. The reverbs don't sum together properly to create a convincing 3D environment, either when using objects or when using the bed, and certainly not in combination with each other. The *theory* of Atmos sounds so cool, but it just doesn't work. Sorry guys, the tech's not there yet, and you're better off just mixing for stereo and binaural. Maybe one day they'll get it right, but it's been out for 10+ years already, so I'm not holding my breath.

[@douglastaylor8039]

Dolby atmos was developed to keep the indie studios out of the tv movie business.

[@dougiemonday]

I wonder if Atmos was invented for efficiency in that they didn’t need to hire different mixing and mastering engineers for a bunch of different formats where they could create intuitive software that could take one finished product and have it be at a high level presented to audiences with many different systems

[@svenisaksson3970]

There is some missinformation, in the video, that need to be corrected. 1) The bed is always 7.1.2! Even in Cubase Pro. Nuendo can have multiple beds, but they are still 7.1.2. This is a "limitation" by Dolby. If you send a 7.1.4 mix to a 7.1.2 bed, the 4 height channels will be folded down into the beds 2 height channels. This has implications, when using the bed for surround capable reverbs. There's no point in using a 7.1.4 reverb, in the bed. This is true for anything that is send to the bed. You don't have any front/back effect in the height channels (as there's only two of them), reguardless of how many speakers you have. If you want to use a 7.1.4 reverb, with the bad, you need to figure out a way to send the surround channels to the bed, and the hight channels to objects (only). 2) Dolby Atmos has 128 audio channels (there are some extra channels dedicated to time code and such). However that does not mean that you can have 128 objects. 10 of those channels are dedicated to the bed, wheather you use it or not. You can have a maximum of 118 objects. The "expert" should have known this, and picked up on these basic errors.

[@KohleAudioKult]

Thanks for bringing up this information! 👍🏻 I did however correctly understand that there’s no front / back in the height channel when using the bed. That was one of the problems I ran into later when mixing btw. I thought that was correctly explained, but anyway I’ll have another listen. The -10 audio channels totally makes sense! Not a real world limitation when mixing most metal though . Thanks again!

[@sricabla]

I can see Atmos being great for movies and video games, but for music? How would Atmos work for a live situation? Would you put the snare above your head? For typical music, I think stereo would be fine. The cost would be high and as I understand it, many people are underwhelmed with that format with conventional music. That's why they are trying so hard to push the format. A lot of money has been invested.

[@KohleAudioKult]

We’re actually taking about how one can use Atmos for rock music in the video. It gives you another dimension which can be great for busy mixes, not for flying snares 😵‍💫

[@PASHKULI]

I tried atmos for headphones. I am sorry, but no. It does not compare to Binaural (True stereo) IRs or BRIRs. It just lacks the… atmos-phere (pun intended!) of the early reflections - something many other simulators also miss (such as DearVR and Isol8).

[@KohleAudioKult]

The binaural playback experience will be what makes or breaks it

[@DEADLINETV]

I think it's marketing. They need to make more money, so this is the latest thing they're placing their bet on. I think it will never work properly in a speaker setup, unless you're single and sit dead centre of your setup. I do get what Apple are doing, but I don't know if I need more than stereo, but I just don't know.

[@sricabla]

How many people are going to have Atmos systems in their homes? (Not many)

[@witte_reus]

apple staff

[@Monsoon1973]

ATMOS is that thing that will never establish, because no one wants to ruin his living room with thousand of speakers staring at you from every angle. By the way: If you want to give a better experience to the listener, write better songs. That´s what the music of our time is lacking the most.

[@LekkerBlanka]

like at the gates

[@LekkerBlanka]

music of our time needs to be even more like at the gates

[@cucumberforest]

Atmos is not wife compatible

[@hoborec]

@@LekkerBlankathis ☝️

[@Iv.T.]

Also doesn't sound so great on regular headphones ...

[@0421072]

Baby Snakes Late at night is when they come out Baby Snakes Sure you know what I'm talkin' about Pink 'n' wet They make the best kinda pet Baby Baby Snakes Looked around An' there's a couple right near me Baby Snakes Maybe I think they can probably hear me Pink 'n' wet I'll take all I can get Baby Baby Baby Sna-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-kes They live in a ho-ho-hole (Tiny hole) That is usually empty (Usually empty, tiny too) They live by a code (Dit dit dit dit) That is usually SMPTE Which stands for Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers Maybe I think That is what keeps them in sync They're wet 'n' they're pink I think I'll give 'em a, give 'em a Give 'em a drink Baby Sna-a-a-a-a-akesss

[@KohleAudioKult]

🙄🙄🙄???

[@LekkerBlanka]

dit dit dit dit

[@LekkerBlanka]

code of the babysnakes

[@shaharbar]

@@KohleAudioKult Frank Zappa

[@Producelikeapro]

Zappa! Movie, song, soundtrack and on Sheik Yer Bout!

[@roberteismann1929]

It's great for cinema and films it's rubbish for most music as to really hear it you will need a atmos room, it simply doesn't work in headphones as binaural. Most people consume music on their phones.

[@crock2434]

Hmm..I'll have to listen to some dimmu borgir , or some theatrical black metal type shit through the Atmos and then through the old 2ch. & 5.1 and see what seems to be affected. I know the movies sound way better...

[@MarcusSt0ne]

IMO for the average listener ATMOS is pointless because no one is going to invest in something like this from a convenience/price point of view lol It is a great idea for movie theaters where you go partially for the audio experience.

[@KohleAudioKult]

Atmos is supposed to work in binaural (on stereo headphones). That’s what makes it different from all the failed surround formats before. Of course nobody’s guilds buy 15 speakers

[@KahruSuomiPerkele]

No one is talking about it 😂

[@KohleAudioKult]

I guess it depends on where you are. The last times I was in LA you simply could not escape the Atmos talk anywhere 😳

[@user-yk4gd1fl4z]

This is what is invented when an industry has been demonitized and have run out of paths that generate income. Total pointless for music and will go the way of quad and 5.1. Its laughable to even think the general public give one single F### about audio quality. No one can even be bothered with a pair of book shelf speakers these days.

[@djdanger9812]

100% this. Most people don't even have a home stereo anymore. Majority of music is consumed in the car or on headphones via a phone where atmos translates like crap. No different on a soundbar or a bluetooth speaker.

[@Rokken2Dokken]

I think it sounds better in dubly kzbin.info/www/bejne/baTdZoKodqiDpJosi=5FkWInQv-Wav6R-C

[@pakiw2]

Atmos in that manner is marketing gimmick. They will push it, but people still will not care. Did you know that many android phones have atmos? And what it is? - multiband compression. Wider scene and other brilliant things from multi direction sound stage is cool, but don't have place in music. Imagine going to a gig and it not being a stereo mix )) How British gonna say "boll*cks".

[@Tt-nt1iu]

…….. I’m still struggling to get my floor Tom to not sound like a wet cardboard box and this dude is talking about 15 speaker setups. I don’t need 15 reference points to hear the wet cardboard box. This content is not for me. I need to get my shit together …..

[@KohleAudioKult]

Looks like you should check out my academy instead! Lotsa courses that might help you 💪

[@Tt-nt1iu]

@ I’ll settle in with a pint of Bitburger, Doner Kevon and get to work.

[@KohleAudioKult]

@Tt-nt1iu Sounds Good! There’s far better German beer than Bitburger though.

[@Tt-nt1iu]

@@KohleAudioKultI live in the states. It’s what I can get. I went to Munich for Octoberfest 2 years ago. The fair grounds was pretty budget. The “old town” section is where it’s at, for sure. Spent most of my time down there. Obviously hit up Hoffbrau because it’s a mandatory visit. I really dug Augustinner (spelling?) Was kind of bummed there was breweries making American style craft beer tbh. I like that stuff like American ipas but I wasn’t expecting it in Munich. Yo, what’s with the perfect circle of gelatin-esque potatoes? I get different cultures do things differently but I have never in my life seen “mashed potatoes” like that. It was a ball and held perfect form. You could throw it at someone and it would only come apart on impact. Everyone served these, everywhere. I’m still baffled. From Haufbrau and everywhere it felt like. Vvvvvvvv images.app.goo.gl/cH9QzrPDnjivR9ER7

[@KohleAudioKult]

@@Tt-nt1iu That sounds like a great trip. I can't help with th epotatoes but yes: That Bavarian beer is the best! Especially Augustiner. 😍