It's important to reduce the data size being delivered to the consumer. We want to be able to check our mix to hear it as close as possible to the way that the consumer hears it-we'll come back to later in the article.īefore going any further, it would be a good idea to understand why we need to compress data in the first place. However, it is not as simple as that, as we will see later. There are two main codecs that are designed for each of these two playback formats: EC-3 for speaker delivery and AC-4 IMS for headphone delivery. Here is a very comprehensive description of the fundamentals of Binaural Audio.
In order to deliver an immersive mix on headphones, it will need to be rendered to binaural. However, delivery on headphones is quite a different case. Speakers can reproduce sounds discretely there is no need to emulate anything for the immersive experience. Knowing more about how each of these works will help us to understand the difference between encoding processes and, in turn, help our approach to mixing music for Dolby Atmos. There are two ways of delivering a Dolby Atmos mix to your ears: using speakers (whether that's a discrete array or a soundbar) or headphones.
This is what I want to address in this blog. But what happens next? How is your mix delivered to the consumer? How does the delivery method impact the way your mix sounds to the end user? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you to make informed decisions during the mixing process.
You have completed your Dolby Atmos music mix, bounced it to ADM – either in the Dolby Atmos® Renderer or from Pro Tools – and delivered it to AvidPlay.