Getting Started with Dolby Atmos in Logic Pro

a couple of weeks ago I published a video where I talked about a couple of topics that I never got around making a video about and I asked you guys what would be the topic that you would like to see and what would be the video that I should make for this particular Channel and one of the topics that came up on top was the Adobe Atmos workflow in logic pro now I've never really gotten around doing anything with logic pro simply because I never got warm with that particular digital audio workstation there was something that didn't really click with me so I used this little motivation to kind of dig a little bit deeper into logic pro and as it turns out the Dolby Atmos workflow in logic pro is incredibly easy and Incredibly straightforward and uh I hate to say that because I do know that I have a couple of Windows Maxima lists in my audience um Apple really nailed that one so this is a really really good one so this is what we're going to do today uh Adobe utmost in logic pro let's get started but first of all Hello everybody in case you're new here my name is Michael Wagner I teach at the Antoinette Westfield College of media arts and design at Drexel University in Philadelphia and on this channel I talk about digital media game design and spatial audio and if any of those topics interest you I invite you to subscribe or join my Discord community in the link is in the description below and since you already edit please also don't talk right to press the like button especially if you get any value out of my videos it really helps out the channel and makes my videos more visible to other people and with that being said let's start up logic now the first thing to know when we're working with Dolby Atmos in logic is that logic provides a completely internal workflow for Dolby Atmos so um it's not like what you would normally see in Cubase nuendo or in Pro Tools where you have an implementation essentially of the external Dolby Atmos rendra and sort of an interface that looks like the external Global surrender in logic everything is completely integrated into the digital audio workstation so in that sense it's it's somewhat comparable to what the Blackmagic design did with DaVinci Resolve Fair lab the the thing with logic is that everything is really streamlined to the way that it becomes very very efficient that has its advantages that has its disadvantages the advantage obviously is that we only have to do a couple of steps in order to get get going so there isn't really much we need to do in order to set up adobe Atmos project now when you create a new project the only thing really that is critical is that you need to select the spatial audio format to be Dolby Atmos that really all you really need to do so you need to set that from off to Dolby Atmos and then there are a couple of other settings that sort of are in addition to that the first thing is that we need to set the surround format not the surround format is the channel layout that they are using for bad channels now for those of you who have never worked with Dolby Atmos Dolby Atmos is a format that essentially combines a channel-based layout which are the so-called bad tracks with an object based layout without the so-called objects and the uh the bad tracks which sort of serve as is something that embeds the entire Dolby Atmos music piece so that's sort of that's the way to think of it it really provides the the bedding of everything that's sort of the idea and the the bed essentially can be in in different types of Channel layouts and the highest Channel count that Dolby Atmos allows is 7.1.2 now in logic we can select between three different options we can say either the 7.1.2 which once again is the standard way to do things or we can also kind of use a 7.1 or a 5.1 a bad layout now I'm going to select a 7.1.2 because once again that's the the way it's usually done the next thing we need to do is we need to select the sample rate and the frame rate and there are requirements for Dolby Atmos Dolby Atmos needs to have a sample rate of either 48 kilohertz or 96 kilohertz logic is nice enough to kind of do that for you so if you choose something that is not 48 or 96 it will actually export everything in 48 so regardless what you're choosing here if it's not 48 or 96 it will kind of default to 48. so it makes sense to just kind of set that manually to 48 and the same thing is for the frame rate now we are not going to really use the frame rate here because we are working with music and we don't really have video and we actually can't do video with logic in that particular case but the frame rate is necessary for compatibility reasons and logic requires you to have a frame rate of 24 frames per second and once again logic is nice enough to actually convert it to 24 if you choose something else so regardless what you're choosing here it's always going to be 24 so it might as well just choose 24. that's what I've done here so uh with that being said uh everything else is just the way it's supposed to be and I'll simply say create a new project and it's going to be an empty project now the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to add an audio track and this audio track that I'm going to add is going to serve as a bad track so it's going to serve as a bet for the Dolby Atmos production or the the short will be at most piece that I'm creating now for the moment being I'm going to leave everything the way it is just make sure that the output format is surround we are going to talk a little bit about the input format I'm just going to lift it as a round for the moment being and I'm simply going to say create and that's essentially created now if I'm looking at that particular track I now see that the track is routed into the output bus and this output bus already has the utmost renderer on there so let's open up the atmos renderer and we can see that this Atmos renderer does not look like that only Atmos renders it's really integrated it's it's really Bare Bones it is it is really kind of scaled down to a level that is just uh perfect in my professional opinion so it's it's very very straight forward use now there's one thing that I'd like to point out here and that is that we can choose the monitoring format and there's something very significant here that no other digital audio workstation can do and that is if we're going through the monitoring formats we see that we can make a couple of different options first of all we have the binaural options and we can choose the Dolby render which is the standard Dolby render I'm assuming that is the implementation that comes from Adobe themselves and then we can choose the upper the Apple renderer either with the standard spatial audio profile or with the personal special audio profile so I'm assuming if you've ever created a personal special audio profile by essentially using your Apple airpods or the airpods max then this will essentially show up here but there are two different options additional options here that I think are really really significant and that is because the airpods and the airpods max actually have um head striking capabilities so essentially they can actually kind of give information about the position of the head if you wear them you can actually if you have them connected if you're monitoring your Adobe Atmos production with the airpods max or the airpods pro you can actually choose a heads tracking enabled and I have to say that this works extremely extremely well so for those of you who have been watching my channel for quite some time you guys know that I did a lot of videos about how to set up head tracking in different scenarios and in different applications but I have to say this is the most convenient and most straightforward way to do that so you just put on your airpods airpods pro iPods Max and then you set the audio so that you actually monitor through those airpods Max and as soon as you do that you can simply select the panel option here the renderer with head tracking and it will completely do a completely immersive experience and you will be in a you will essentially experience your Adobe Atmos production in exactly the same you would you would experience that with a very very sophisticated 7.1.4 or 9.1.6 Channel layout it is really really beautiful it is really really well done and this is actually the one thing I think that might kind of convince me to actually do everything with logic in the future because this is so super convenient now obviously we also have a couple of other different options depending on what your speaker there is now I'm going to just choose the Apple renderer because of the way I'm kind of working with my headphones here and kind of the recording I can't really use my airpods but but essentially kind of for the purpose of this video this is perfectly fine so let's get started and let's uh drop a little Loop into this trick now I'm going to use a couple of Loops that I've used in previous videos for those who have been watching my channel for quite some time we are familiar with those um I apologize if you reuse the same audio or over and over again but it kind of it makes sure that essentially there is no copyright right and everything is fine so so what I'm going to do is I'm going to drop a drum Loop onto the bed Channel that I have here so let's let's drop that here um and let's maybe kind of change the um the loop here and let's kind of make it a little bit larger so that we kind of see a little bit something and there are a couple of things that I first need to do and the the first thing is that I need to change the input format so essentially I need to change the channel mode button and the reason for that is because at the moment this is assumes to be a 7.1.2 file but it actually isn't so it's going to kind of do something weird with the with the panning so in order to make sure that that logic does it correctly we need to kind of tell it that it actually kind of is expecting a stereo a stereo kind of a loop and uh so for that essentially we need to change the channel modes now if you long click on the channel mode you actually have the different options here you can also simply just kind of Click once and it's going to change to uh the stereo and as soon as I do that the actual renderer the actual panning device is going to pop up here and this is going to be the the painter that I'm going to use so I can actually change the depending of this stereo track in my 7.1.2 speaker layout so these are the 7.1.2 speakers so they're essentially the seven blue ones are the horizontal ones and then I have the the two hate speakers here and I can then essentially upscale or up mix uh this this drum track so let me just kind of uh get something going here so let's just play that [Music] so I can essentially kind of food and let's let's move that maybe a little bit uh kind of in into the air so if I'm truly changing to the spherical Panna so let's let's move that up here so we have a little bit of elevation here and uh and I think that is pretty much fantastic so that we have everything that we have stuff going on on all 10 channels so um now this would be now the the bed and obviously we kind of have different tracks that all feed into the bed all we really need to do is we need to make sure that we are going to send everything to the surround output and the surround output then once again is going to present into the atmos renderer the atmos renderer is is essentially kind of here and uh so let's add two objects and uh to be more exact let's add two object tracks because there are actually Four objects these are two stereo tracks and these two stereo tracks essentially end up being four objects so essentially two stereo pairs so let's just add steel so I have like a base Loop here let's add that here and I have a synth Loop here oops where are we synth Loop and uh and then essentially what I need to do is I need to um create or I need to change those tracks in such a way that uh that logic understands that those are um those are objects now uh the way what you need to do is you need to go into the in case it actually isn't already set because in my in my particular case actually logic remembered the way I wanted it and it actually already did that correctly but what you would normally we need to do is you would need to go down to the output uh kind of settings and you will need to change the output to surround and then the panning to the 3D object panel now the 3D object panamic sure that the panning is done according to the um essentially there is this pinned as an object into the Dolby Atmos render so let's let's select that as soon as we do that we see we have a different type of Panna here this is now the object panel and the other thing that you see if we open up the atmos render again we see that the base is now the base trick is now kind of recognized as in 3D object and it kind of also tells me that this is a stereo object so it's actually two objects in the Dolby Atmos renderer I can see that also here in the uh essentially input object channels so essentially say that I have two channels of the 180 object channels now selected and these two channels once again are the left and right channel of the Bass track and then let's also do the same thing for the synth so let's Coast it here and let's do for the synth once again we need to go to surround and we need to select the 3D object printer if you can't select that by the way make sure that you have the correct input settings so this need to be this needs to be stereo in order to be able to select it so so let's let's uh let's select the 3D object panel here and as soon as I do that the synth track also shows up as an object and it now tells me that I have four channels essentially selected of the 118 channels that are able or that are possible in Dolby Atmos so let's let's just kind of listen on how that sounds [Music] and then we can do the obvious thing we can kind of pan these objects in three-dimensional space so let's just do a little bit so let's let's open up maybe the up the uh the atmos render again and let's uh let's Pandy the bass so it can essentially kind of move that and as I see as I'm moving that around I also have the same movement going on in the Adobe Atmos rendra I can change the height I can change the size of the sources of the audio sources [Music] now the one thing that I think that um in this in this particular panel in the in the um 3D object panel the logic provides you can't really change the height information of the two channels independently so you you couldn't create something that is asymmetric so if you can't do something for example when you want the the right channel uh higher than the Left Channel or vice versa you can't really do that with that with that Panna I found that to be very very curious and uh it's kind of interesting I think it's it's an interesting approach because what it really does is it it kind of makes everything very very simple uh so you can't really do much complicated things you but you can do the things that you would normally need so 99 of the cases this is perfectly fine and if you ever get into the situation where you actually want to have things asymmetric where you want to have one channel higher than the other uh what you can do is you can simply split it up into two mono objects and then essentially pen these two mono objects independently and obviously we can also do the same thing for the synth so let's go into the synth and let's move those um maybe just a little bit so that we have something going on here and let's uh as soon as I play that essentially I will see that here in the in the renderer [Music] foreign and that's pretty much it so that's really everything you need to do and you just go around and create your Adobe Atmos project pan your tracks around move things around choose the um heads tracking option if you have airpods Pro or airpods Max are headphones that then allows you to really kind of listen to it in a fully immersive way it is just very very very simple to to use and very very straightforward kind of to create something that's uh that that is still the atmos now the final thing I want to just talk about briefly is to how do you export everything in logic and the way to export it is also very straightforward so essentially what you would do is they've already kind of Meet the selection so I have this little Adobe Atmos project now which has one which essentially has one bad Channel or one bed track this is the drums track and then I have two object tracks that kind of end up being once again four objects in the Dolby Atmos render and I've kind of made this selection here so what I would need to do is I would need to go into file into the export settings so not bounce uh don't bounce we're going to go into export and in export we need to export as ADM bwf that is sort of the the master file format that is used and you can either select the uh to save the entire project or the selection in my particular case I'm going to just uh kind of save the selection so let's click on that and what it will do is it will essentially kind of come up with a little dialogue so let's call that test and let's drop that onto the desktop and let's create save and that is pretty much it so let's open up our test file with the external lobe Atmos renderer to see if everything was actually exported correctly so let's open up the Adobe Atmos renderer now a couple of you have asked me how do I actually uh open up a master file in the Dolby atmosphere it's actually very straightforward all you really need to do is you need to go into the file menu and here you have openmaster file so that's what you're going to do so open up a master file now the one that we're going to map is the test file here and let's open that and as soon as I open that I see it recognized the fact that it has four objects these four objects once again are two stereo channels so there are four individual objects but essentially two stereo Pairs and then we have the 10 Channel bed track here and let's just play if everything is playing correctly and indeed it does and that is essentially extremely straightforward to do and extremely too easy to use and by the way one of the things that I found interesting is that you now can also use the Adobe Atmos masterfully sort of almost as an exchange format because once you have the Adobe Atmos Master file um you can actually also import that intervention resolve or you can input that into a nuendo and then essentially continue there so it almost becomes almost like an exchange format which which I found is is very very interesting now this is really everything I wanted to say today um now my final verdict about the Dolby Atmos work for in logic is that it is probably the most the easiest kind of to get started so if you are somebody who wants to get into Dolby Atmos and you have a Mac and you have logic this is the perfect way to start it doesn't get easier than that and it's very straightforward and it works extremely well and most importantly you can do heads tracking without any complicated setup you just kind of make that selection put on your airpods and that's it then you are in immersive Dolby Atmos Studio which is really really fascinating that it is possible to do it that way anyway this is everything I wanted to say today thanks again for watching if you uh have any questions or comments please use the comment section below or once again join my Discord community in that link is in the description below and with that being said see you at the next video

Channel: Michael G Wagner

Views: 10,257

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Id: SU459dSa_a8

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023