The Little Windows Version That Couldn't - the updated Dolby Atmos Renderer

[@newmachine00]

Oh man, i just love the sound of the lewitt mic.

[@michaelgwagner]

Yes, it’s a nice one!

[@reverendcarter]

this is a lot better than having to get the machine from dolby. we'll eventually see a full windows solution happen eventually. i think this is a precursor to dolby rolling this out to a wider base or something is developing that makes this work. this really opens up possibilities.

[@michaelgwagner]

Let’s hope so. But it could also be that they are going to push the integrations into DAWs.

[@martins1254]

@@michaelgwagner Like Nuendo...

[@rejoiceinthetruth]

Hi Michael. Your videos are an incredible resource! I am a cubase user, with a 7.1.4 monitor studio setup. My current workflow is to output an ADM file and generate an MP4 via AWS for QC on my home theatre system and for sharing on my website. Will this new software allow me to do anything I can't already do?

[@michaelgwagner]

If you are happy with the AWS solution then most likely no. The rendere just makes this much more straightforward.

[@rejoiceinthetruth]

Thanks. I'll stick with the AWS solution for now. It works well and costs less than 5 cents per render. One thing I wish Cubase had was an automated object panner that would allow me to apply tempo based panning patterns. Do you know of any solutions for that?

[@DavidJones-oy7qg]

Hi Michael, thanks for all the videos on Atmos, you kept me sane as I produced my first set of Atmos masters. I use Nuendo on a Windows 10 PC, so this is relevant for me. Essentially what I'm getting from this video is that you can play Atmos master files but obviously not edit enything. Will it play out of my interface at full 7.1.4 like I get from Nuendo? It would be great to be able to export an Atmos master and then load into this software to audition in its full rendering?

[@michaelgwagner]

Yes, you can play out at 7.1.4. If you have a 9.1.6 or a 11.1.10 or whatever, it can do that, too. Auditioning at higher channel counts is one of the things this can be used for.

[@DavidJones-oy7qg]

@@michaelgwagner Thanks so much for the reply; great news. The label I have a few albums going to at the moment have no way of auditioning Atmos and their playback system is only 2.0 or headphones. Can this renderer play out binaural? Can it do the full range of downmixing?

[@sickmessiah]

I remember being able to use the rewire protocol 10 years ago. Had a limit of 16 channels but I could rewire multiplayer daws to get much more going in between programs on windows. Now vst3 can do that. With things like ARA I’m sure a better more user friendly solution could be found.

[@michaelgwagner]

It should be possible from a purely technical perspective. Reaper can route 64 channels internally. For most Atmos productions that would already suffice.

[@bakerlefdaoui6801]

Hi, since the dolby atmos music panner is not available on windows machine, is there a similar "panner" in DAWs that integrates the dolby atmos renderer like Nuendo ? I am assuming that mac and windows Nuendo versions offer the same features. Thank you.

[@michaelgwagner]

There is a solution that I’m going to talk about in the next video.

[@BrettWMcCoy]

Exactly how I am using the renderer on Windows -- now that Pro Tools has an embedded renderer, I do all my work directly in PT and then use the external renderer to test playback and export to MP4

[@michaelgwagner]

Interesting. I never got around how PT on Windows looks and behaves.

[@BrettWMcCoy]

@michaelgwagner Curious what the real technical challenge is with the Dolby Audio Link on Windows.Vienna Ensemble Pro (VEPro) is able to stream multiplexed MIDI & Audio between DAW (via plugin) and the VEPro server, regardless whether it's on the same machine or not.

[@michaelgwagner]

@BrettWMcCoy I honestly don’t know. Rearoute can now route 128 channels into Reaper.

[@Miguelc271086]

What do you guys have in mind for DJs & background music playback? I don’t see any gear that can output atmos in xlr and we’ll do all the processing with our live mixer PA set up… all the atmos gear is overpriced because it has components we don’t need, like EQ, amps, analyzers and processing that we already have at our venues…

[@CharcoalProduction]

media encoder from dolby is an awesome tool to create mp4 files for dolby atmos or dolby audio qc

[@michaelgwagner]

A bit pricey, but if you can use it to generate income, certainly a very good tool to have.

[@mixourband]

Hi Michael. Thanks so much for sharing. I'm using Logic's Dolby Atmos workflow. Do you have any recommendations for creating simple QC deliverables. I've watched your other LPX Atmos videos. A start to finished deliverable video would be greatly welcomed.

[@michaelgwagner]

For Atmos music QC deliverables are best done through the external renderer. Video is still more of a highly specialized thing.

[@mixourband]

@@michaelgwagner Thank you, But I should clarify my question. I am able to create a deliverable ADM BWF file by (Exporting) in logic and I've found that I can (Bounce) out a Surround Binaural Apple Spacial .wav file. Then I can import that bounced file into LPX using the (Import/ Create ADM BWF Project from File). After the import I have to re-instantiate the LPX Atmos Renderer set to Apple Spacial and it seems to work allowing me to hear my binaural mix. My question: Is that the correct procedure? For QC-ing the mix in LPX? Your expert advice about this process is seriously appreciated. Thank you again.

[@michaelgwagner]

Sorry, for some reason you comment was held in the review pile. Happens very rarely on this channel, so I did not see it. No, you don't have to export and reimport. Just set the renderer to binaural monitoring and your are ready to go. :)

[@peterranallo]

Hi Michael, thanks once again for being my source of info on my Atmos journey. I am on PC, and thanks to you , use AWS for MP4s, but having a soft to do QC will save me tons of time. Can the Dolby Suite also export binaural mixes to send to clients? I have watched your videos on doing it in Cubase and Nuendo , but have had no luck. I would love for clients to be able to A/B stereo vs Binaural. Can be as simple as me sending them 1 track which switches every now and then from stereo to binaural. Hope this makes sense and thanks again for your videos, Peter.

[@BleuNoirProductions]

Just my two cents, also cubase user. My atmos renderer sits on a 7.1.4 group track, which is routed to a 5.1.4 output (which happens to be my studio setup). on the bus where the renderer sits, i have a send going to a separate output called “Stereo Mixdown” that isn’t connected to any hardware, but when i want to export a binaural mix, i switch my renderer to “binaural” and export from the Stereo Mixdown output. You can do the same with a 2.0 mix. To A/B for a client you could bounce both binaural and 2.0 separately and then alternate them manually in a separate project and export that. Hope this helps, atmos is still pretty finicky in places 😁

[@michaelgwagner]

The external renderer can rerender in any configuration you need. Even though it is limited with respect to being used with a DAW on the same machine, it is the version that was/is used on the high end production scale.

[@peterranallo]

@@BleuNoirProductions Thank you Gerben. I will certainly try this.:)

[@peterranallo]

@@michaelgwagner Thank you Michael.

[@robinrolfhamresolidskillsy.]

Thank you for this video. Let's say you have two PCs with proper specs and two interfaces with enough channel count as well as a clock to sync evening up, wouldn't this make it possible to build your own RMU for less than the licensed one from Dolby while waiting for a one-PC-Win-solution? I'm on Nuendo 11 on Win 10 soon to upgrade to Win 11. Cheers!

[@michaelgwagner]

Have not done that myself, so take this with a huge pinch of salt, but that should be possible.

[@robinrolfhamresolidskillsy.]

@@michaelgwagner Lovely, thank you! Again, thanks for your videos! Cheers.

[@alejocazu6]

Interesting video - pity about the limitations. I have a question - more like a doubt. What happens to the Bed when you are using a 9.1.6 setup? Are the extra speakers unused? Or is the bed expanded throughout the whole array?

[@michaelgwagner]

It does redistribute the signal but it does not upmix afaik.

[@bharathj63]

Buy a Merging Anubis. The revenna Format comes with a feature called as the audio bridge which is exactly what the dolby audio bridge do.

[@michaelgwagner]

Interesting tip, thanks!

[@MusicByNumbersUK]

not watched the whole video yet but if it supports asio then wouldn't reaper's "rearoute" do the trick to allow it to be on the same machine? :)

[@michaelgwagner]

Unfortunately no, because rearoute can only route into Reaper.

[@sickmessiah]

It would be great to at least be able to import multitracks and assign them to either the bed or objects to work in atmos without a classic daw.

[@michaelgwagner]

That would require the renderer to have DAW like functionality because you would need to be able to automate object positions. This is very unlikely to happen.

[@QFXmusic]

Good review thanks Michael

[@michaelgwagner]

Thanks! 👍

[@bobo_sound]

Waiting for a solution for windows home studio 7.1.4

[@SamHocking]

For pure single PC use, Dolby really need to just make the renderer Jack aware like Harrison Mixbus, Ardour & Bitwig. Routing 129 mono channels without underruns is trivial in Windows reallly it's such a small amount of data transfer for todays PCs. Obviously if they do that, they also need to release the panner, but that is basically just values sent over ethernet with a sample position and the renderer aligns it against LTC from what I can tell.

[@michaelgwagner]

You would think it’s trivial. Yet, I haven’t really seen a stable solution.

[@SamHocking]

@@michaelgwagner Studios are running DANTE and Jack is basically the same thing without the hardware requirement. Jacknet even integrates devices into a DANTE network. The problem is Dolby will probably not use a proprietary system like Jack as it would remove all need for buying hardware and they generally dont tread in the toes of DANTE and MADI manufacturers.

[@SamHocking]

If you run LTC generator and connect two 129 channel devices with Jack and get no underruns your system is streaming bit perfect audio between them. 129 mono channels of 48k 32-bit is around 200mb/s but localhost bandwidth of a typical PC motherboard is around 5gb/s it's basically nothing for a modern computer to deal with imo.

[@michaelgwagner]

There is a difference between routing to an external device and routing between applications. Dante Via maxes out at 16 channels, Voicemeeter’s virtual cable cannot do more than 8. On Windows I have not seen anything comparable to what you can do on a Mac with Loopback or the Dolby Audio Bridge. All you need is a stable virtual audio cable with 130 channels. You don’t need Dolby for that. If it is that easy to do, why doesn’t it exist?

[@SamHocking]

@@michaelgwagner I'm really discussing the routing internally in the context of DAW output audio directly to the DAR input. To achieve that on MacOS you have to install a 3rd party virtual device called the Dolby Audio Bridge and I guess it aggregates to a physical hardware output. This is exactly what JACK does either aggregating to your ASIO,WASAP, WDM,MME or DirectSound hardware device or even to other virtual devices such as DANTE VIA, DANTE DVS or anywhere on the internet with JACK running. It then handles an infinite number of channels set in the config and routes them just like DANTE does with DVS only you don;t need a networked audio device like DANTE, because it's a server and can use any of the hardware drivers above. WASAPI & ASIO bypass Windows Kernal, so it's a direct software to audio output Windows has no involvement in, other than iirc a slight 4ms overhead, but for DAR, it's running at 512 or 1024 samples anyway so nobody is really tracking through it and 4ms is still perfectly workable for live and tracking use.

[@DavidMartinez-se5vl]

Hi. Just to clarify, I cannot route positional information from my DAW in windows to a separate Windows computer that has the renderer?

[@michaelgwagner]

That is my understanding, yes. There is no Windows version of the music panner.

[@tannerlenox304]

So does this mean that it's possible to use Nuendo and access a larger speaker system than 7.1.4?

[@michaelgwagner]

Not in Windows, unfortunately. You can’t connect the external renderer to Nuendo within Windows.

[@tannerlenox304]

@@michaelgwagner But on a mac you could hypothetically connect to a large speaker setup like 9.1.8 with nuendo??

[@michaelgwagner]

Via the external renderer, yes. The internal renderer is limited to 7.1.4.

[@tannerlenox304]

@@michaelgwagner Awesome, thanks

[@TonCorderoM]

I have a doubt, which other Daws than Nuendo and Cubase have an internal Dolby Atmos Renderer?

[@michaelgwagner]

That would be Pro Tools, Logic, DaVinci Resolve/Fairlight, and Pyramix.

[@TonCorderoM]

@@michaelgwagner does Pro Tools have an integrated renderer? I didn’t know about that, I just knew about the compatibility with DAPS (now DAR)

[@michaelgwagner]

Yes, sorry, you are correct. They now have a tight integration with the external renderer but it technically not an “internal” solution.

[@MarcoManzo]

Higher channel counts on windows, unstable? hmm, did movies with 300-400 channels in Nuendo ... never had any problems. Of course this depends on the PC components.

[@michaelgwagner]

I meant routing between applications. Within a DAW is a different story.

[@MarcoManzo]

@@michaelgwagner kzbin.info/www/bejne/q37bdWmnr6yrZ8U

[@shan5445]

Are you mixing through Binaural headphones?

[@michaelgwagner]

I usually don’t use binaural. For some reason that never clicked with me.

[@shan5445]

@@michaelgwagner you have the full Atmos speaker set up

[@michaelgwagner]

No, I usually do head-tracked stereo.

[@sickmessiah]

Can’t we do Sony 360 on windows in a more streamlined way? It’s a very simple concept.

[@michaelgwagner]

Haven’t done much with Sony 360 yet. Would have to look into it.

[@ahawk706]

ASIO Link Pro is a good replacement for Dolby Audio Bridge.

[@michaelgwagner]

Yes, only problem is that this is no longer in active development.

[@ahawk706]

@@michaelgwagner its a freeware now. and works perfectly

[@MrAchris10]

Not sure why they can't just make a ADM file playback, QC and, export Standalone for the Windows and Mac that allows us to connect it to our audio interface and play it through our speaker setup ( Dolby Atmos "car test") maybe even DAW export connection like Cubase/Logic Pro/Studio One export ADM and open in Dolby Atmos QC. I contacted Dolby to ask about it and I don't think they understood what I was asking for. I'm currently learning JUCE to see if I can design something that can do this.

[@michaelgwagner]

I’m honestly not quite sure if I understand your ask either. 😂 Doesn’t do the renderer exactly what you are asking for?

[@MrAchris10]

@@michaelgwagner They should just release a stand alone Quality Control (QC)/ADM file playback version for Windows that lets us utilize our Audio interface for 7.1.4 or what ever playback system we have. I also like the MP4 and other file export option. This would not need to do all the work we want the production suit or mastering suit to do.

[@MrAchris10]

Cubase plays back out Dolby Atmos session or I can export a 7.1.4 audio file. But I can't play it back and reference my finished work outside of the Cubase ecosystem "car test" aside from the Amazon work around.

[@MrAchris10]

I want to build a desktop app that reads ADM files and allows me to rout the output to my 7.1.4 speaker setup.

[@michaelgwagner]

But the standalone version that can play back ADM, export quality control mp4 and rerender to any commonly used channel configuration is exactly what the Windows version of the Dolby Atmos Renderer is. 😳

[@ronfrancois]

Still not ready for prime time. Dolby will have to decide whether they want this as a truly ubiquitous standard.

[@michaelgwagner]

I think a fully functional Windows version of the renderer would help in the adoption.

[@qinglit1420]

How to Convert ADM Files into MP3 and Upload Streaming Media。

[@michaelgwagner]

You would have to render that in stereo or binaural. You could also render in 5.1 and upload that as a surround sound file.