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Post by marcl on Jun 4, 2022 6:23:48 GMT -5
For live audio recording....
The one bit of advice I would add - for people who haven't done this sort of thing before - is that theory and practice are often quite different.
For example it makes intuitive sense that "you could take a good digital recorder, set it up with a pair of microphones, in a room, and make a decent stereo recording". However, in practice, it quite often fails miserably to work out that way. You frequently end up with something that sounds VERY different than what you remember hearing from a few feet away. And it sometimes takes an amazing amount of processing, adjusting, and correcting, to get anywhere close to the original reality.
(I've heard similar claims about women and makeup: "It takes a real expert to apply makeup so it looks like you aren't wearing makeup.")
There are also some (a bunch) of hidden limitations with Atmos... For example... those objects take up space... and bandwidth...
Use a bunch of objects for a short time and it's not a problem... But use too many objects, for too much of the time, and there's a real risk that you won't have room on the disc for your movie, or that you'll exceed the allowable total bandwidth for UHD Blu-Ray. Or you might end up having to decide whether to sacrifice video quality or audio quality so they both fit.
(Which means that you can use a lot more for an audio-only disc where you don't have to worry about the space or bandwidth required by the video.) The documentation for the Atmos mastering apps is actually publicly available for anyone who wants to read all the fun details (you can Google for the current links)..
(But it's pretty dense unless you actually have a use for it.)
Regarding live recordings, I have made a few myself that sound amazingly good. They were done when I played in various bands in the 70's and 80's so it had to be simple since 1 - I had to be playing the whole time and couldn't monitor, and 2 - I had a big drum set to haul around and had to keep the recording gear simple. I used a Nakamichi 700II cassette deck, DBX124 noise reduction, Nakamichi condenser mics on a single boom stand Blumlein configuration, and a little Nakamichi mic mixer to get line level into the DBX. I placed the stand at the center front of the stage with the mics about 7-8ft above the floor (depending on the venue's ceiling, no less than 2ft from the ceiling). The jazz recordings with keyboards, bass, drums, trumpet and sax came out the best. In the video that I posted earlier with Morten Lindberg he talks a lot about how he does his minimalist recordings. Basically, instead of spending days recording little tracks and mixing them ... he spends days getting the balance right acoustically. Then it's up to the musicians to be able to play the music! On the second point, I was wondering about the bandwidth issue. Seems to me since the sound objects are waves of different lengths, they can also be of different bandwidths and sample rates to economize based on the needs of each sound. Some could be looped on playback, and many will be reused over and over. Maybe it isn't a big issue in practice. I think the real issue is content providers are probably more interested in lighting the Atmos light on the AV receiver than actually making a lot of use of those objects. I've strained to hear if anything was coming out of top speakers at all, and have read lots of posts of others doing the same. Someone posted a video of one processor's 3D rendering in real time of the speaker content during that Wonder Woman movie on HBO ... the tops almost NEVER fired. But the Atmos light was lit the whole movie. Does Apple actually mix ALL the content on AppleTV+ using all the capabilities of Atmos? |
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Post by marcl on Jun 5, 2022 11:37:29 GMT -5
I posted yesterday that I was listening to the Norah Jones album Come Away With Me, the Super Deluxe release in Dolby Atmos on Apple Music with Apple TV. It sounded great at first, but then I felt that it was just heavy in the bass. Like way too much "meat" for a song like Don't Know Why. One reason was related to the fact that I do LFE with my front speakers and subs for music, and the bass adds up +3db with both fronts playing. Although, that should not be the case below 50Hz when it's just the subs playing as usual. So using the LFE level control in Preferences I adjusted so that with the fronts+subs playing LFE, it's +10db above the L/R as it should be. Then, I listened to the Atmos version again and captured one minute of spectral content peaks with the REW RTA. Then I played the stereo 96/24 FLAC version that I have of the original 2002 release and did the same thing.   Atmos on the left ......................... Stereo on the right Get a load - and I mean LOAD! - of that bass! What is that constant content well below the range of the bass and bass drum? |
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Post by housetech on Jul 6, 2022 10:15:12 GMT -5
That look … the proverbial “Dan Quayle in headlights” … The expression is "deer in the headlights." Just sayin. Or "QuidproJoe10% in the headlights". oops, forgot 10% for the Big Guy |
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Post by Jean Genie on Jul 8, 2022 14:34:51 GMT -5
I joined the Audio Engineering Society about three years ago, mostly to get free access to papers, and also with the hope of going to local Philly Chapter meetings and the conference in NY occasionally. But alas, the first local meeting (March 2020) which was to be a presentation and demo of Atmos by Dolby folks at the Comcast Center in Philly, was cancelled due to Covid. Last night was the first in-person meeting since … a demo of the new Atmos production room at Montgomery County Community College (about 10min from home). This is a new $2M+ state of the art Atmos room that’s part of the facility with several other stereo rooms in support of a great audio production curriculum. The program was given by David Ivory, Director of Sound Recoding and Music Technology, with the help of a few of his students. After brief opening discussion of Atmos and the facility, we broke into smaller groups with one going to the Atmos studio for the demo while others toured the smaller studios. (oh and there were snacks too!) In the Atmos studio David described the equipment supporting the 7.1.4 system. All Genelec monitors, one of only nine SSL 9000K mixing consoles in North America … and lots of stuff with knobs! In the demo David showed the basics of Atmos mixing … i.e. “these are not your father’s pan-pots!” One monitor shows a 3D view of a virtual room with a listener outlined, and the “bed” channels along with sound objects are depicted in their locations in the space. He showed how you can move the sound objects to their location, and then adjust the “size” of the object … which mixes some of its sound into the bed for a more diffuse effect. Using the tracks from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, he isolated sounds and showed how they were placed around the room. And finally, he played the whole track in Atmos. I enjoyed watching the 3D view which lit up each object in yellow when it was playing … don’t we wish we had this for movies! It was interesting that – having the “new toy” – it seemed the whole mix was happening above and behind me except for the lead singer. So when I got home I listened to it with Apple Music on MY 7.1.4 system, and the effect was the same. View AttachmentView AttachmentView AttachmentA couple other notes … It was interesting that the young students – and even to a degree David, an industry veteran – kept referring to the mind-blowing potential of going from 2-channel to Atmos. It’s as though 5.1 never happened … which, for most consumers and folks in the mainstream music industry … I guess it didn’t. So my questions about “we could have done a lot of this before with 5.1” just kind of fizzled amongst the excitement of “Atmos is a game-changer”. I did get to ask the question I really wanted to ask, after it was mentioned that the studio was set up by Genelec engineers with their digital room correction system GLM. I confirmed … they correct the room to a flat target … no upward ramp in the bass, no downward ramp in the treble … flat! www.genelec.com/calibration-acousticsI didn’t get a chance to ask David .. but I talked a bit with one guy – an engineer/producer from Atlanta – about the idea of using Atmos in a live recording situation to capture the actual ambience of the room and real positions of the instruments. Like, to make a recording that sounds like musicians playing together in a room! That look … the proverbial “Dan Quayle in headlights” … A side note, FYI; Did you know there's a Penn State University anechoic chamber in the Warminster/ Ivyland area? It's on Bristol Rd., on the site of the former Johnsonville Naval Air Station. |
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Post by marcl on Jul 8, 2022 14:37:51 GMT -5
I joined the Audio Engineering Society about three years ago, mostly to get free access to papers, and also with the hope of going to local Philly Chapter meetings and the conference in NY occasionally. But alas, the first local meeting (March 2020) which was to be a presentation and demo of Atmos by Dolby folks at the Comcast Center in Philly, was cancelled due to Covid. Last night was the first in-person meeting since … a demo of the new Atmos production room at Montgomery County Community College (about 10min from home). This is a new $2M+ state of the art Atmos room that’s part of the facility with several other stereo rooms in support of a great audio production curriculum. The program was given by David Ivory, Director of Sound Recoding and Music Technology, with the help of a few of his students. After brief opening discussion of Atmos and the facility, we broke into smaller groups with one going to the Atmos studio for the demo while others toured the smaller studios. (oh and there were snacks too!) In the Atmos studio David described the equipment supporting the 7.1.4 system. All Genelec monitors, one of only nine SSL 9000K mixing consoles in North America … and lots of stuff with knobs! In the demo David showed the basics of Atmos mixing … i.e. “these are not your father’s pan-pots!” One monitor shows a 3D view of a virtual room with a listener outlined, and the “bed” channels along with sound objects are depicted in their locations in the space. He showed how you can move the sound objects to their location, and then adjust the “size” of the object … which mixes some of its sound into the bed for a more diffuse effect. Using the tracks from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, he isolated sounds and showed how they were placed around the room. And finally, he played the whole track in Atmos. I enjoyed watching the 3D view which lit up each object in yellow when it was playing … don’t we wish we had this for movies! It was interesting that – having the “new toy” – it seemed the whole mix was happening above and behind me except for the lead singer. So when I got home I listened to it with Apple Music on MY 7.1.4 system, and the effect was the same. View AttachmentView AttachmentView AttachmentA couple other notes … It was interesting that the young students – and even to a degree David, an industry veteran – kept referring to the mind-blowing potential of going from 2-channel to Atmos. It’s as though 5.1 never happened … which, for most consumers and folks in the mainstream music industry … I guess it didn’t. So my questions about “we could have done a lot of this before with 5.1” just kind of fizzled amongst the excitement of “Atmos is a game-changer”. I did get to ask the question I really wanted to ask, after it was mentioned that the studio was set up by Genelec engineers with their digital room correction system GLM. I confirmed … they correct the room to a flat target … no upward ramp in the bass, no downward ramp in the treble … flat! www.genelec.com/calibration-acousticsI didn’t get a chance to ask David .. but I talked a bit with one guy – an engineer/producer from Atlanta – about the idea of using Atmos in a live recording situation to capture the actual ambience of the room and real positions of the instruments. Like, to make a recording that sounds like musicians playing together in a room! That look … the proverbial “Dan Quayle in headlights” … A side note, FYI; Did you know there's a Penn State University anechoic chamber in the Warminster/ Ivyland area? It's on Bristol Rd., on the site of the former Johnsonville Naval Air Station. Wow I didn't know that. Well I guess a lot of facilities around there to acquire since they shut down that place and I guess part of the Willow Grove facility. Glad Penn State is putting it to good use. |
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Post by AudioHTIT on Jul 9, 2022 20:37:43 GMT -5
A side note, FYI; Did you know there's a Penn State University anechoic chamber in the Warminster/ Ivyland area? It's on Bristol Rd., on the site of the former Johnsonville Naval Air Station. Wow I didn't know that. Well I guess a lot of facilities around there to acquire since they shut down that place and I guess part of the Willow Grove facility. Glad Penn State is putting it to good use. Sacramento State University where I finished college, had a very nice and pretty large anechoic chamber in the basement of the physics building (it’s probably still there). When I was taking the class “The Acoustics of Music”, I used the chamber for a class final project, I measured some of the best speakers of the day (from my store at the time). They had nice B&K oscillators, calibrated mics, sweep generators, even speaker turntables to get polar response — it all came out on paper chart recorders. I did thorough testing of the original Sound Labs electrostat, the first generation B&W 801, and the Beveridge Model 3 electrostat (tough to get a heavy, over six foot cylindrical speaker to sit on a turntable sitting on a suspended floor). I thought it was so cool to be able to do stuff like that, though most of the class glazed over when I did my presentation. However the physics teacher (also a musician) liked it very much, easy A in that class, and a very enjoyable, educational time in school. |
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Post by marcl on Jul 10, 2022 7:33:56 GMT -5
A side note, FYI; Did you know there's a Penn State University anechoic chamber in the Warminster/ Ivyland area? It's on Bristol Rd., on the site of the former Johnsonville Naval Air Station. Wow I didn't know that. Well I guess a lot of facilities around there to acquire since they shut down that place and I guess part of the Willow Grove facility. Glad Penn State is putting it to good use. Sacramento State University where I finished college, had a very nice and pretty large anechoic chamber in the basement of the physics building (it’s probably still there). When I was taking the class “The Acoustics of Music”, I used the chamber for a class final project, I measured some of the best speakers of the day (from my store at the time). They had nice B&K oscillators, calibrated mics, sweep generators, even speaker turntables to get polar response — it all came out on paper chart recorders. I did thorough testing of the original Sound Labs electrostat, the first generation B&W 801, and the Beveridge Model 3 electrostat (tough to get a heavy, over six foot cylindrical speaker to sit on a turntable sitting on a suspended floor). I thought it was so cool to be able to do stuff like that, though most of the class glazed over when I did my presentation. However the physics teacher (also a musician) liked it very much, easy A in that class, and a very enjoyable, educational time in school. Sounds like a really interesting class! When I was at Drexel in Philadelphia (EE77) I took Musical Acoustics from the Music department (tiny though it was) and all I remember was the fascinating tour of the Academy of Music underground labyrinth of concentric walls made of bricks stuffed with horse hair - mimicking the construction of the La Scala Opera House in Milan. Otherwise all I remember was the professor ending every vague lecture with "a great deal more research needs to be done on this subject". BTW, the new rehearsal room he designed was one of the worst acoustic environments I ever played in ... reverberation time was measured on a calendar! I took an acoustics class in the EE department and I think there was a lot of calculus ... and as a drummer I enjoyed Bessel functions. But the best was the jazz class, given by the Music department but taught by a physics professor Art Lord who was a great alto sax player. He brought in Pat Martino's quartet to play a free concert every term, and I played a few gigs with Art over the years. |
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Post by ausman on Aug 2, 2022 9:48:15 GMT -5
atmos as it stands today or as it stands today or as sony and yamaha depicted in the early to mid 90's of 21-28.4/6/8 1in 3-4 outs
Yeas I have seen a mixing boards in cinemas settings to know there can be upwards of 36 channels +
this is when speakers were king in Japan
Not sure whether a sub processing board you would be needing to add to the rmc-1 32 speakers just to handle the 32 channels of information
at 16 channels you 11.5
to clone 7.1-7.3 3x 28.3-28.6
on a 11.4 3x 33.12 not sure how you 45 channels of sound
with the capacity of s second preamp section combined with a 7 channel and a 14 channel amp you could do up to 21.6/8 and do as sony and and yamaha did in the 90's
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