#05 - Dolby Atmos!?!?!?

hey everybody Welcome to the Vlog I've got a lot of things to do this week and I'm first going to get started with four tracks that I have to master [Music] all right so I've got the jobs done I switched cameras because I'm going to need my phone which I do now use mostly for the Vlog because it's time for a little Dolby Atmos experiment I'm really looking at Adobe Atmos at my own pace a lot of people are saying most of all on the Dolby side that Dolby Atmos is happening now and rush rush rush and blah blah and I'm looking at it and thinking like yeah but if Dolby Atmos is really going to be the thing then it's going to be the the thing for the next 50 years 100 years whatever how long has stereo been the thing so there's no need to rush then because if it's going to be the thing then you know why the rush so I'm looking into it at my own pace and I'm I'm really working up from understanding the protocols to understanding it from the consumer perspective and that is something that I I want to test today at a professional perspective I want to wait with that a bit later because I think I can be spoiled and biased by having have had the professional experience with like speakers all around me I think I would interpret the uh Dolby Atmos Mexican consumer devices differently so I bought new airpods airports Pros not just for the atmos mix but also because my old ones were really really dead I bought these because first of all I see a lot of people wearing these and that is of course because apple is a Big Brand they know how to sell things secondly is that adobe Atmos is turned on by default as far as I know on iPhones and stuff so a lot of people that I see with those airpods Pro are probably listening to Atmos mixes already so I think it's the biggest group of consumers currently listening to Atmos I want to know what they are experiencing so that's the first reason the second reason that's really interesting about the airports is that I think it's one of the only products that actually creates personalized spatial audio as apple is calling it and professional terms is called an hrtf hat related to transfer function which basically involves scanning your head so that so that the apples can calculate the filtering and timing of the sound so that it suits your head because the shape of her head and the shape of her ears are really important for determining where a sound comes from and because these are in-ears it's like they're missing out on a lot of that that stuff but I wanted to try out the atmos on camera so that you all can see my first reaction to it so um yeah let's let's do that and I can like I can switch to I cannot switch it off like this oh oh that sounds more roomy than this sounds almost mono let's do a head tract maybe that's better interesting so I can also listen what's happening over there okay weird there's some harshness in it I think from the filtering actually balances are different there's also a loudness difference between um the atmos mix and the uh off and the loudness is a bit higher when I turn it off which would trick a lot of consumers into deciding that the off one is better so the non-atmos makes one of the tricks also is that I'm really used to the stereo mixes of these tracks so hmm okay let's see if we can find something else that is in Atmos okay chick chick is also an Atmos let's listen to that for a bit again it has it has some high frequency restlessness there there's something there's something wrong with the high frequencies probably in the filtering timing or whatever it's like the high it's it sounds a bit Harsha and smeared out or something let's switch now to the stereo mix okay okay this no now the Hat the the the atmos version sounds better than the stereo version the stereo version is a bit boring oh I mean it's Chic it's very good music but it's a bit boring compared to the the atmos makes all of a sudden it's like wow okay not sure if that is Atmos or just the fact that they made a new mix because sound character is also different I'll I'll figure that out okay okay okay there was another artist purple disco machine that also made uh their mixes into Atmos as far as I know so Atmos has a problem with loudness because with cheek the loudness was pretty much matched but with this track the stereo mix is a lot louder yeah the stereo mix is a lot louder than the Outpost mix and the atmos mix isn't that much different like if I've played fixed compared to the stereo mix honestly it's it sounds a bit Less Direct well it's a dance wreck like the dance tracks have to like that's what we're used to of course maybe we're going into a new style of dance tracks where it's less direct but it sounds a bit Yeah Less Direct I don't know it's not really that I'm yeah no okay not convinced so that's weird I was expecting I was expecting a lot more from it first of all I was expecting that I could really hear as if as if the sounds would would be in front of me like I'll speak a chef something called a phantom image which is like super strong on these speakers like it's really and you've gotta experience this once before you understand what I mean but um it's really like the center image really it it sounds as if the sound comes from here and I was expecting that with these Atmos mixes as well it's not honestly only on that cheek mix which I'm now going to research it sounded better on the other ones gives experiences to The Listener that I as as an audio engineer don't want to give right now like that's the current state of it think a lot of more development is needed actually it sounds like this is a consumer device it should be okay on consumer devices it should be loudness corrected and it should like that high frequency stuff it's weird it's weird binaural fullback of course but I definitely do not have that spatial feeling like some stereo makes it sound more spatial than the spatial mixes I'm going to check what what is going on with that uh cheek mix now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so here's something interesting I've just extracted the 7.1.4 mix from cheek also extracted to binaural version and the normal traditional stereo version and when I compare the stereo version together with the zoomed Atmos mix it's pretty much the same like it's not fully the same because it's not correctly panther stuff but when we look at sound character balances that kind of stuff it's the same while when I was listening on the airports I thought it was different and I think the difference really is because it's now in Atmos but it definitely is not because they did some weird or special things like adding more low end or whatever it really seems to be the original mix that they've mixed to Atmos and I'm really wondering if this is really the atmos thing or if this is really you know could this also be Universal stereo mix where you are panning it inside of a binaural room and exporting that instead I should be able to try that in some way I'm not sure yet how but I want to compare Atmos which is like object oriented so that it's it's being basically folded back to stereo or the amount of speakers that you have at the consumer side I want to compare that with a binaural stereo mix definitely when it comes to stereo devices that consumers use like this so another interesting thing is that I've checked a few other tracks as well for instance the purple disco machine track that I just listened to and what I noticed here is that it's um they're not doing a lot of stuff in Atmos and I respect that because you should only use these type of techniques if it really can impress somebody don't overdo it like that's I I understand that but on the other hand I'm also thinking that they've just made an Atmos mix so that they are Atmos which is of course a marketing move another move that is good for the consumer and definitely not good for the atmos protocol because now we're getting Atmos mixes that aren't sounding as good as stereo mix so why should people listen to Atmos mixes yeah they listen to it because it's enabled by default but if you need a move like that something's going wrong what I think needs to happen is that the atmos should be protected so Dolby or somebody or whatever it should be checked it should be validated it should be whatever so that whenever it says Atmos that it actually is a sign of good quality as well because right now it's just a logo that everybody wants under their song so that it gets algorithmically boosted that's the feeling that I have right now about Atmos and I've seen a lot of those YouTube videos about Atmos as a scam and Atmos snake oil or whatever and I'm starting to understand that I don't have a final opinion about it yet because I want to dive deeper into this subject because I think I don't understand enough of this to have an opinion about it but I do understand where they're coming from I definitely understand it if this would be a scam or something like like just a it would be one of the biggest ones in the music industry like I don't know anyway it's interesting and I'm just going to continue my research but I first wanna take a look at the contents of this box let's do that over here I mean I already had this setup running with the camera so why not use it for this unboxing so DIY re DIY recording equipment has sent me a package and they oh there we go and in it is oh I thank you letter this is basically a gift from them because let's start building this is a DIY compressor and they cannot you know if if they request the the equipment back like I built it myself so they cannot really sell it anymore after that so um it's the stereo VCA compressor and what is actually going on with this is they asked me to to review this just as a compressor but I like building equipment so much that they uh said to me like hey we'll send you the DIY version also because I want to make some modifications to it or try out some modifications to see how much it matters and tell you about the modifications as well which you can I think also get from the factory not sure about that actually but uh yeah operation manual well I think we're first going to need the build manual let's see let's see what's in here we got the top got all type of components we've got the true bypass oh this is very well sorted oh okay that makes things a lot easier threshold makeup I'm not I'm not going to pull out all these components because that's I don't play the mess but we've got a lot of different components in here and oh that's at the bottom here we go the pcbs that's very nice okay cool oh and these ones also support the original uh dbx vcas uh that I actually have in my uh other self-built SSL compressor however I don't have more VGA so I'm going to build this one with the new officiated 2181 and and it will also be interesting in comparing the old and the new VCA with each other oh wow now that I'm seeing it like my DIY heart starts to starts to beat again it's such a long time ago that I built equipment and it's so much fun to do so we've got Transformers basically this kit has everything in it plus some extras that I requested oh this is the power supplies that's really cool I don't have to build my own power supply which is also a lot safer like this just gives low voltage DC um this is what I'm going to build during the next month I think I think I'm going to do this at home uh in the evenings or something it's so much fun to do and it's also it's very double like it's it's a lot of fun to do on the other hand things like warranty do not really exist on Cell build equipment I don't know what it is for this but generally um you know you only get warranty on factory made products definitely when you're doing more obscure DIY builds like when you're really like this is a kit but if you like want a DIY a pool Tech or something and not from a kit but really from components like if it breaks you have a problem so that's the reason why I don't have a lot of DIY in my racks because I wanted to always function and if it doesn't function I don't want to be the one with a headache I just want to ship it somewhere where it gets repaired but on the other hand I do really like electronics and Building Things myself it's just a lot of fun so it's it's a bit double anyway really excited to start with that project but the video is probably not going to be about about the building itself I might film a little bit of the build process but I am going to need an extra camera for that actually like a GoPro or something to Time Lapse it and to show a few things which I don't have right now so um I generally need an extra camera a lot of times that's a different story anyway I've got an appointment in 45 minutes I think I'm going to do a little bit of business stuff in the meantime and then have that appointment and I think that's also it for today so I I just want to know from all of you I did two Vlogs where I um switched the days and I also did two Vlogs where I didn't switch to days where it was one long story what would you like to see let me know which which hand did I use uh anyway I'm not her package came in which is starting to become a little bit of an issue like I have a lot of boxes to take care of and a lot of equipment actually coming in and going out to do and I don't know when to film and what doesn't help is that I'm taking a small holiday break in one and a half weeks which I'm actually now preparing for like making sure that I can do the holiday break with the least amount of interruptions for the YouTube channel and the clients but anyway this this uh package came in because this package is from my friends at illusia I um I really appreciate the illusion brand uh for well basically daring to be different like look at just look at her equipment it looks different uh and also for their manufacturing methods and laser focus on quality I think that everything they built can easily be used in like a nuclear power plant in terms of like how how reliable and well they design and build things and the units that I own right now are the character and the expressor Neo I also tested the envelope from a colleague of mine not not blown away by it yet but in here are other modules let's see if I can yeah in here are the 500 Series so that's really cool and they didn't knew yet that I uh bought a rack like I didn't tell them or something it was just I think the universal showing that it existed me see if I can gently open this because as far as I know I can't keep these but I haven't talked about that yet actually so who knows in here is the sculptor preamp module and I actually have two of them so I have another box with another sculptor in there and let me see it says gain shape low cut compression another shape oh it has a I think this one is software controlled yeah yeah I remember that yeah techno mute face reverse phantom power Direct in so I'm really excited to check out these preamps I do like to be challenged with my uh reviews and she said that to illusion like hey challenge me and they they've given me a very cool challenge uh for this review which I was immediately down for so you'll see that in a review but that you know I'll start head after my holiday so who knows when that will be published uh yeah but for now let's just put them in the rack [Music] great success [Music] oh that's hot it's now uh Thursday the first Vlog that I filmed for this series actually went up yesterday just so you all know and I'm going to say this a lot of times but the Vlog is one month behind which basically makes it possible for me to do this Vlog because it gives me time to edit I always say the best rhythm is the Rhythm that you can keep up with the responses I got for the Vlog until now have been really good also if we look at the data it's all looking very good I see a good audience retention and that kind of stuff so I'm going to proceed with the Vlog in the current form and I just hope that the views will go up a little bit more because it's now on the low side for my channel but it's also a new piece of content so probably the people have to get used to it and in this case the algorithm also has to figure out the content so I have decided for now to continue with the Vlog but I don't know yet what the rest of the Vlogs are going to get in terms of comments feedback and data what I'm going to do today has actually been a last minute change I've actually been informed about that this morning again I have two assistants that's really they are so great in what they do and make sure that I keep up with everything uh what happened is that sonobo emote me actually yesterday evening but I saw it this morning that's the smart gate has been it's going to be released on next Tuesday and I love sonnable products I love to cover them on my channel and I'm seeing a lot of people actually really like the um AI stuff that sonnable is doing I I wasn't actually able to cover them panning wise but we've shuffled planning around so that I can film this video and probably edit it as well today and by the end of the day the video will be ready for release next Tuesday I'm in a huge video finishing and editing a flow because um I'm taking a holiday for a week and in that holiday week we've got four videos to be released two videos from products that are still on the Embargo like product releases a vlog and of course my usual Saturday upload so I'm really in a editing a video Rush right now now before I'm going to film that that smart gate review I mean reviewing a gate is going to be difficult but again I want to add one more thing to my airpods experience that I did earlier in the video I've noticed a few things actually first of all the problems that I had with the high frequencies I turned off the personalized spatial audio setting and the problems with high frequencies were gone what I think happened is that the scan of my hat wasn't done correctly and I'm going to have to dive into that a little bit more what I think I actually have to do is tie my hair up and do another scan because I think it saw part of my hair as a solid well hair actually doesn't really block audio like it's very open so I think I'm going to have to put my hair in a ponytail or something and then do another scan because I think it will and maybe also take my glasses off because it will get a better picture of it then so that's for the high frequencies and when it comes to the the spatialness of the Audio I basically kept spatial audio turned on during the last few days and I just been listening to music as I always do my airpods there is some kind of suspension of disbelief happening which is also something that happens in movies it's not suspension of this belief but it takes a little while for your brain to click into that spatialness so it seemed to me that sounds started to be more spatial after listening to it for a while like you had had to get used to it or something however after turning off the personalized spatial audio uh it actually uh was less good of course the spatialness the sound was better but spatialness was less good so I wanted to add that because the thing is just I see a lot of opinions on the internet but I really want to be balanced when it comes to this because I really have been thinking that a form of three-dimensional or spatial audio is going to be the future of audio I don't know if Dolby Atmos is going to be it or something else but I know that it some some of it is and I'm actually super excited about that but I want to stay in a very good balance like I want to stay very neutral about this because in the end for me it's also going to involve uh Investments like deciding on an investment because like for my passion I would love three-dimensional and spatial audio to be the future um and if I had an unlimited amount of money I would have already made my studio spatial audio three-dimensional audio Dolby Atmos compatible but I don't have an unlimited amount of money like people think that YouTubers make an insane amount of money it's not that's it's not true I've actually been thinking of sharing all the Revenue data so that you all can see that it's not that that special I've been thinking of transforming my room into that but it has to make sense from an investment perspective because in the end it also has to make money I also have to be able to sell jobs for it and how I actually want to make it is in such a way that I can offer Dolby Atmos mixes for the same price as stereo mixes so that the investment Works in a way that anyway long story short I still have a long way to go with figuring out this whole Atmos thing but again starting at the consumer and we'll work my way up to pro audio from there I think that's the logical route anyway sonable smart gate [Music] oh [Music] and it is Friday well for me it feels like Monday which sounds weird for most people but um what I mean with that is that on Monday I have the highest energy level and during the week I'm losing energy and then the weekend I recharge but actually I don't know what I did I think I have had a few days of very good sleep so I'm feeling very energized so that's good also if you're wondering what the Rubik's Cube is doing in my studio uh it's basically my fidget toy and um I've learned myself that whenever I need to wait for renders for bounces for whatever to not grab my phone which I cannot do when I'm making time lapses because I'm making the time lapse on my phone as well but to grab the Rubik's Cube instead normally I would go on Instagram and basically scroll for half an hour while I was waiting for a job of five minutes and now I'm just grabbing the Rubik's Cube and solve it a few times and it looks very magical but you can just look up the algorithms on the internet online and memorize the algorithms and then it's just a matter of doing it a lot and making your thing like it's not that it's not that special I've just been working on solving an issue with a client which is a production that I've been mastering for him and we've been working on that production for two or three months now already there were some challenges in there and there are lost challenges in there is that it's a very low frequency heavy master and I've already dialed low frequency back a little bit in the mastering are actually quite a lot actually I think four or five DB less than I would like to have it because we are noticing that this master tends to be form pretty bad on other speakers so on good speakers on headphones that capture performs good but on Lower tier speakers on big PA speakers on loud loud speakers it doesn't perform that well we are trying to figure out what is exactly going on and honestly I've never dealt with this issue like I know about the issue and I basically have a lot of checks to know if I have enough low end if I have too much or too little but in this case something weird is happening and what the client did is actually run it to a few online mastering Services as well I think he picked my analog pre-master so through my analog gear and then three online services and the weirdest thing is that those Services actually gave more low end and also the different filtering so I've been filtering low frequencies a lot like like the sub super low so the the more infrasonic infra frequencies or more the frequencies that you few instead of the ones that you hear also because we're at a pretty decent loudness so there's more of that in there and definitely at like 30 Hertz or something like there's a huge boost at 30 Hertz in there in those monsters so I'm thinking that we're looking at the wrong spot for this problem I'm actually thinking that problem is around 100 to 120 130 Hertz where it's like more Punchy and stuff because I I'm noticing a difference there as well on the other hand I really like it that it purchases so good in that frequency range so um actually email the client about this he's very technical knowledgeable and stuff so I first want to discuss it with him super professional guy by the way so I'm really happy with uh with him and the way he's communicating and stuff but I want to achieve two things in this process and that's just um I wanna know um what is the problem and I also want to know how I can avoid this issue um the next time that I'm doing this so yeah that was the first thing that I was working on today and now I'm going to need to do one revision actually for client I think it's like a really really small job and I have to help a client out with uh recovering his files because that client basically had a computer crash and doesn't have the raw files anymore and I try to store things on like a very long term I really use a three to one method for that and I'm going to recover his Masters that I made and also his his original stems foreign I hope this Vlog hasn't been too boring but again my goal is to keep it real I'm not going to make things any more special or any better or worse than they actually are I really want to be me in my studio sharing what I'm doing

Channel: White Sea Studio

Views: 8,045

Keywords: studio, audio engineering, mixing, mastering, recording, music production, white sea studio, wytse gerichhausen

Id: RKKMub6uWBU

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023