Dolby Atmos in the Studio: How the 3D Sound Stage Technology Is Reshaping Music Production in India

Dolby Atmos entered India in 2012 with the launch of the first Atmos-enabled display screen at the Sathyam Cinemas in Chennai. The similar yr, Rajinikanth’s Sivaji 3D was launched with Dolby’s object-based audio know-how and premiered at Sathyam. Since then, Dolby Atmos has change into a family identify, related to earphones, headphones, dwelling theatres, good TVs, smartphones, and every other system with a speaker. And that’s how most of us perceive the know-how – a 3D sound stage that creates a surround-sound impact whereas watching motion pictures or listening to music utilizing Atmos-enabled units.

But that is only one half of what Dolby Laboratories does. The different half of the Atmos implementation happens effectively earlier than the finish consumer hears the expertise. This is the post-production stage of a music or film, the place Atmos-enabled software program is used to upmix the music or remaster the film audio, making a 3D sound stage impact.

Then, when a music combined utilizing Atmos is performed by an Atmos-enabled system, customers get to listen to music which was greatest described by The Weeknd as an expertise that takes “music to a new place by creating an immersive world where you can feel every detail. It’s surreal.”

To expertise this and be taught extra about how know-how shapes the music creation course of, I lately travelled to Fresh Lime Studios in Saket, New Delhi’s sole Dolby Atmos–licensed studio.

Music Creation Inside a Dolby Atmos Studio

Fresh Lime Studios, based by Berklee College of Music alumnus Tanishq Seth, contains a Dolby Atmos-certified recording room, the place he and his staff help musicians in creating and upmixing their songs in the 3D soundstage format.

The room is constructed round a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos configuration. It options three monitoring rooms, together with an ISO sales space, a dwell room, and a vocal sales space, and comes with a full suite of drugs from Neumann and Sennheiser. Notably, a 7.1.4 speaker setup refers to seven {surround} audio system positioned round the listener at ear stage, one subwoofer for low-frequency results, and 4 overhead or peak audio system used to ship 3D spatial audio.

Dolby Atmos setup
Photo Credit: Dolby

At the coronary heart of the music creation course of is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), a software program (usually Avid Pro Tools or Steinberg Nuendo) that acts as the central hub to file, edit, combine, and produce audio (consider it as the Photoshop of sound). The DAW runs the Dolby Atmos Production Suite, a software program toolkit developed by Dolby that permits sound engineers and music producers to create, combine, and monitor Dolby Atmos content material inside the DAW.

Within this toolset, music producers achieve entry to Atmos Renderer, which allows the placement of particular person devices, vocals, or results as separate “audio objects” in a digital 3D area. Unlike conventional stereo, the place components are fastened to the left or proper channel, Atmos allows full freedom of motion by putting a vocal instantly in entrance of the listener, panning guitar riffs behind, or letting ambient results swirl above.

Notably, a typical setup helps as much as 128 audio tracks, which may embody as much as 118 audio objects and 10 channel beds. The audio objects enable particular person components, corresponding to a vocal line or snare hit, to maneuver independently in 3D area, in response to the producer or artist’s desire.

Seth informed Gadgets 360 that each producer can have a distinct imaginative and prescient for a music, they usually can upmix or produce the file in a different way, making the soundscape really feel fully distinctive. Of course, there are some fundamentals to be adhered to, however every thing else is a artistic course of.

As talked about above, a observe can both be created natively in Atmos or it may be upmixed (if the stereo model of the observe already exists). For the former, the artist and the mixing engineer take spatial selections from the floor up, and these might be extra experimental in nature. When upmixing, the engineer recreates the intent of the stereo combine whereas enhancing it with extra depth and dimensionality.

Once the Atmos combine is created, it’s exported as an Audio Definition Model in Broadcast Wave Format (ADM BWF) file to retain all the positional and timing information. This grasp file is what platforms like Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal use to ship spatial audio to listeners.

Singer Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, who showcased a music upmixed utilizing Atmos, defined that this 3D sound stage additionally provides artists numerous freedom in creating a singular audio expertise. She highlighted that, not like stereo, the place audio arrives in a linear airplane and might usually really feel flat, Dolby Atmos makes the listener really feel like they’re in the similar room as the artist and the band.

“With Dolby Atmos, we calibrate the environment to reflect how the content was mixed, not just for preference, but for spatial accuracy and emotional depth. This approach allows sound to move organically through any space, connecting with listeners in a way that feels both authentic and deeply engaging, thereby ensuring a consistent premium and immersive experience, no matter the device or setting,” mentioned Sameer Seth, Director, Marketing-India, Dolby.

While most individuals know Dolby Atmos as a playback characteristic in headphones or TVs, its actual impression might lie earlier in the studio, the place it’s quietly remodeling how music is crafted, layered, and spatially designed.