As the demand for more engaging and realistic audio experiences continues to grow across various industries, learning to work with immersive audio can be incredibly beneficial for your career as a sound artist. Becoming proficient in immersive audio technologies like Dolby Atmos can help you stay competitive in the job market - while captivating your audience and transporting them into the heart of your narrative.
In part one of our Mixing Films in Dolby Atmos tutorial series, sound designer and re-recording mixer Nick Ainsworth demonstrates his process for mixing immersive ambiences in Dolby Atmos. Working in a 7.1.4-equipped room at Electric Ear Studio in Los Angeles, Nick gives an overview of the Dolby Atmos Renderer, discusses his Pro Tools template, and provides commentary while he mixes an ambience-heavy scene from the film Giro Prepares for Death. The sounds used in this tutorial are from the Cinematic Winds and Odyssey Collection: Ambiences libraries from Pro Sound Effects.
This video features binaural audio. Headphones or in-ear monitors are required to hear the spatial mix accurately.
Watch Part 2 - Mixing Hard Effects in Dolby Atmos
00:00 - Introduction
Nick Ainsworth introduces himself and the room he’s working in, a 7.1.4 mixing suite at Electric Ear equipped with Meyer Bluehorn speakers and Avid control surfaces. He explains that the ambiences used in this tutorial are all from Pro Sound Effects’ Ambiences and Cinematic Winds libraries.
00:34 - Dolby Atmos Renderer Setup
First, Nick provides a brief overview of the Dolby Atmos Renderer, which processes spatial panning data from Pro Tools for playback in 7.1.4. The Renderer also provides downmixing to stereo, binaural, and traditional surround formats.
02:47 - SoundQ & Editorial
When editing, Nick uses SoundQ to search for suitable ambience recordings, sort the results by multichannel format, and spot his chosen files into Pro Tools. To achieve an immersive effect, he uses a combination of 5.1, stereo, and quadraphonic files, often upmixed and augmented with additional mono and stereo layers.
05:31 - Pro Tools Template
Nick’s Dolby Atmos mixing template is organized into folders containing Bed and Object tracks, busses, and VCA faders for each stem. The backgrounds stem is divided into predubs, including BGA (air and wind) and BGB (nature and wildlife). Each predub includes a 7.1.2 upmixer track and two Object tracks for spatial panning. EQ and limiter plugins are pre-loaded on each track.
11:44 - Reverb and LFE
The template contains four reverb Beds. The first two each combine two instances of Altiverb with slightly different settings to create a quadraphonic effect. The third features the Slapper plugin to create outdoor ambiences, and the fourth features the Cinematic Rooms plugin for longer reverbs. Nick decides not to send any of these to the overhead speakers to avoid cluttering the mix.
The LFE send is filtered above 150 Hz, and Nick makes a point of sending only discrete content to it. Finally, Nick illustrates how the backgrounds bus feeds the FX Master bus, where it joins with other stems including Foley and hard effects.
15:22 - Stereo Exterior Example
Nick begins by working on a sequence which shows Giro riding a bicycle through a forest road, then walking his bike up to a ramshackle house. Using NUGEN Halo, Nick upmixes a stereo forest ambience to 7.1.2, adjusting the spread, brightness, diffusion, and fold-down settings to achieve an immersive result.
He then puts the ambience tracks into Touch/Latch automation mode and loops the section while balancing levels for consistency. Next, Nick mixes in layers of birds, insects, and lake ambience using EQ, panning, and reverb to situate these sounds in the environment. Then, he finalizes his work by committing the automation and verifying the result.
31:04 - 5.1 Exterior Example
Next, Nick works on the preceding sequence, which takes place on a pier. The main ambience is a 5.1 lake recording upmixed to 7.0 with the LFE track removed. Other elements include a distant ferry, walla recorded by extras on set, waves lapping at the pier, and squawking birds.
Nick pans the walla offscreen to the left, the lapping waves to the right, and the birds overhead. The ferry stays in the screen channels, but Nick uses EQ and reverb to blend it into the distance. Finally, he checks the transition from this sequence into the next before committing his automation settings.
40:48 - Quad Interior Example
The final sequence takes place at night, beginning with an establishing shot of Giro’s house before cutting to an interior shot of Giro lying in bed. For the establishing shot, Nick upmixes a stereo night air ambience to 7.1.2. For the interior shot, he uses the Spanner plugin to pan a quadraphonic room tone in 7.0, positioning the rear channels halfway between the rear and side surrounds. He then loops the sequence to balance the levels of the two clips.
Nick then mixes in a recording of crickets, splitting the clip across two tracks so he can apply different reverb and EQ settings to situate the sound appropriately in the exterior and interior environments. Again, Nick finishes by committing his automation and checking his work.
45:45 - Panning Automation Example
After cutting the static ambiences, Nick decides to add some panning automation to the bicycle scene. First he moves the lake ambience to an Object track, then pans the track to the right to match the camera movement. He then automates a high shelf EQ to “pull focus” from the lake and help it fade into the background.
47:41 - Playback
Next, Nick takes a listening pass through the whole scene, looking for opportunities to refine the story by highlighting important sounds, reducing distractions, filling in any awkward pauses, and adding additional spot effects as needed. But, because there is no dialogue or music in this scene, the ambiences sound great as-is.
49:57 - Harmonic Distortion & HEAT
Finally, Nick explains that he has had the HEAT plugin running throughout this tutorial to add subtle harmonic distortion to the ambience tracks. This smooths out high-frequency transients for a more mellow sound, gives the ambience track more consistency, and helps softer sounds be heard on small speakers.
Ready to learn more? Level up your mixing and sound design with Part 2 in our series with Nick Ainsworth, Mixing Hard Effects in Dolby Atmos, as well as more PSE tutorials: