Immersive Mixing

Mixbus Pro provides everything you need to publish an immersive music mix to Dolby Atmos compatible streaming services such as Tidal, Amazon, and Apple Music.

*Dolby, Dolby Atmos, and the double-D symbol are registered trademarks of Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation.

Check with your distribution service to see if they support immersive mixes.

What is surround sound, and why does it matter for music?

The vast majority of music is mixed for stereo listening: on headphones/earbuds, in a car, or on home speakers.

But ‘Surround’ music has some technical benefits over stereo, just as stereo had big benefits over Mono. Firstly, it provides more ‘space’ for musical parts and instruments. With this additional space in the soundstage, it’s less necessary to use drastic EQ and filtering to differentiate your parts of a busy mix.

Additionally, surround music helps to fight the ‘loudness war’ because the typical surround setup is optimized and quieter than other listening environments. Surround mixes are enouraged… even required… to provide a lower overall level, and a wider dynamic range than stereo mixes which must compete with noises at the grocery store, in the car, or at the gym.

Finally, the kind of listener who listens to their music in surround is an enthusiast … exactly the kind of person who can appreciate the Mixbus sound!

What is channel-based surround?

In a channel-based surround system, the number of channels has a 1-1 relationship with the number of speakers in your setup. A mono system has only one speaker, which is fed by a single channel. A stereo setup has 2 speakers, each fed with a different channel (signal). A 5.1 surround system has 6 speakers with 6 discrete channels, and so on.

The format also defines the speaker placement: 5.1 expects you to have a center speaker, and 2 side ‘surround’ speakers in addition to the main stereo pair. A dizzying number of channel-based formats have been introduced and (very often) abandoned …. especially for home and commercial theaters.

When targeting a particular playback venue (whether a home theater, car, or headphones), the mix engineer is expected to provide all the channels of audio to match the speakers for that system. As the channel counts grew, and the speaker layouts became more diverse, it became harder and harder to anticipate how many mixes should be released, and how the listener might listen to your mix. Particularly in the film & video world, this could result in a half-dozen or more releases, each targeting a different speaker setup. This often
required multiple mixes to be provided for each format – generally with no increased budget

But today’s music isn’t so simple either: with playback ranging from phones, to headphones, to soundbars and home theaters, it’s hard to make a mix that meets everyone’s needs. Home-theater listeners demand that all the speakers of their surround-setup are exercised. Headphone listeners want a sense of ‘space’ that exceeds the old stereo limitations.

What is Immersive surround?

Immersive music takes surround to another dimension: with immersive music, you can move sounds not just in front and behind you, but also above you: a new mixing dimension called height, or elevation.

What is Object-based surround?

In an object-based mix, each sound (represented as a track or bus) is assigned a position in x,y,z (left-right, front/back, and up/down) coordinates. In object-based mixing, you don’t really know which speakers (channels) your sound will be delivered to. The object’s position only serves as a guide, and the signal is dynamically routed to a best-guess approximation on the user’s speaker setup!

*In practice, features like ‘Snap’ allow you to pin a signal to a specific speaker. For example you can put a speaker in the front-center and assign it to Snap there. Assuming there’s a center speaker available, then your sound will appear ONLY in the center speaker, and not bleed into adjacent speakers. In the case that the Center speaker isn’t available, the renderer will put the sound equally in the Left and Right to simulate a phantom Center.

The most important thing to understand is that object-oriented mixes are rendered to optimally match the playback system, whatever that might be! You may never really hear the exact sound that your listener will hear. While this might be frustrating, keep in mind that this gives the listener more control over how they listen … and enthusiasts want more control! The Dolby Atmos translation is better than current delivery systems.

Object-based mixes are equally compatible with one (mono) channel, 5.1 surround, or as many as 60+ speakers that you’ll find in world-class movie theaters. Object-based mixes are the most future-proof format yet, and are intended to give the listener an immersive experience that takes advantage of whatever speaker/headphone setup the end-user is listening on.

By placing sounds in 3D space, it is even possible for sounds to retain their perceived location, even if the listener turns their head. For example, someone using VR goggles to watch a movie might want the sound to come ‘from the video screen’ even when you turn your head away from the screen in VR space. This is called ‘spatial audio’ and requires headphones that provide a head-tracking function. An Immersive mix can become a ‘spatial’ mix given the right hardware and settings.

Object-based mixing is the next frontier for surround sound. With over thirty years of experience in multichannel audio for Cinema, Harrison understands surround sound. Mixbus is the first DAW to eschew channel-based surround entirely, and focus on object-based mixing.

!The Dolby Atmos Render requires your session to be running at 48kHz

Features of Immersive Mixing in Mixbus:

• Innovative object panning on every channelstrip: “mix like a console, not like a plugin”
• No brainer setup – Mixbus has taken a most complex concept, simplified it making it easily accessible to any musician or mixer wanting more for their mixes
• Extensive features and shortcuts to mix faster and better : writing dynamic 3D automation is easy in Mixbus!
• No additional software is needed to create your immersive file for “Atmos compatible” immersive streaming services such as Tidal, Amazon, and Apple Music.
• Monitor your mix on 7.1.4 speakers or headphones (using binaural cues), directly from the Mixbus software. No other software is necessary to start making Dolby Atmos-compatible mixes!.
• Mixbus makes it easy to meet loudness specifications with LUFS and dBTP displayed directly in the main mixer window.

Are you ready to get started with Immersive mixing? Start on this page: Immersive Mixing: Getting Started

For more details about the channelstrip immersive panner and its controls, visit this page: Immersive Panner Section

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