And one thing you should set expectations or work on - treat the room or measure it and compensate for it. If the client comes in with a nice mix and it sounds off in your room, it ruins the experience.
Look into SoundID Reference. It can measure and calibrate the room and make up for any room issues, so you don’t have to install endless dampening panels.
Also make sure to measure and calibrate the speaker volumes to the right SPL. Depending on room size, 79, 82, or 85db.
Yea the room is treated allready, I measured and adjusted it with easera.
Right, I think this could work too. I’m just used to doing it the other way, since I run DAWs. For sync, all the apps can adjust a sync offset (well I should saw ProTools, Avid, Nuendo - don’t know about Flame). You calibrate A/V sync with the Catchin’Sync iPhone app. It records the screen and 2pop and gives you the exact offset from your listening position to plugin into the app.
I see hdmi only has 8 channels of audio… from my decklink, sdi has 16… ugh.
So if I want to play ball i have to go external audio interface thousands of xlr and power cables instead of getting a good “home theatre” setup for the suite… crazy
Yea i switch between apps all the time so having the audio delay dialed in at the receiver end is GREAT! I much preffer the receiver route for many reasons, i get a headache just thibking about all the monitor controllers and xlr runs and everything , i wanted to get away from that badly…
Get an external audio interface that is AES enabled and an amp that can take an AES input (if that exists, quick search didn’t show any). That way it would only be a single network cable, and speaker cables.
I think for complex setups like this you’re better off de-coupling your audio config from your video config. More choices, less headache.
The audio interface will come with great control software, and you have everything in one place, like the screenshot I had above.
Receiver are really consumer devices 
You two, get a room (…with a romantic Dolby Atmos rendered atmos track…).
Thats what I like about them 
they made all the cabling in the suite so much more simple, less headaches, no annoying drivers, incompatibilites etc just works , the amount of sh*** i had to eat with audio drivers in the past… and kernel panics, linux issues etc… omfg…
I really only ever deal with stereo and I have 0 interest in doing sounddesign or audio mixing . Literally null, I studied way to much audio in college, and I have completely lost my love for it, I just want it to work
I’ll jump in here. You can’t do Dolby Atmos in Flame. Not properly. You’d have to ask for a mix down. It’s not really Dolby Atmos anymore though and wouldn’t meet spec for most Dolby Atmos requirements. Not saying you can’t do it though as you’d assume a mix had already been approved in a Dolby Atmos capable room.
You can do it in Resolve. It does give me shudders that Resolve can do so much more of this type of thing than Flame when the software is a few hundred bucks for a perpetual license. Makes it hard to finish in flame.
In terms of monitoring, depending on whom the delivery is for, there are specifications for the minimum requirement for Dolby Atmos monitoring. Some Dolby Atmos sound bars are approved believe it or not.
Ok so resolve can read that ADM file, the atmos master and send it out to atmos capable systems?
Who makes the list of approved systems for listening? or where do I find it 
(like any generic ones i know id have to ask my client for specifics)
It does sound like they want to be able to approve a mix at our place but i am not even 100% sure yet…
Trying to read through public tech specs for Sky and they want english atmos as DAMF and german atmos as eac3 (*.ec3) file (what the ?!) .
so yes Resolve can definetely read the dolby master file and play it back, but all it does is give my receiver discreete channels out, so just get 7.1.4 chanells i can assign to whatever i have as output, so thats kinda ok? so resolve then does the dolby rendering internaly, nice.
it can also show the actual fades in 3D space in realtime , thats fun
So as I understand - i can open a dolby atmos master file aand play it back no problem, even see all the automations, all the beds and objects etc.
I can then chose what my speaker layout is and the included dolby atmos renderer is rendering to that target, can even downmix and export for flame if I want to…
So it seems pretty straightforward to be able to listen to atmos masters actually
Ok so lets say thats all good, I can playback video with atmos on my home setup it all just works fine, its surround, its very atmos, comparing the atmos demo via appletv to the master file (its the same clip, you can get it from blackmagic website) played back in resolve sounds the same.
my home cinema is just 5.1 so idk i am missing something from the workflow but it sounds good for now?
With more research HDMI is limited to 8channels so that wont do, so I think I have to go with a soundcard and active speakers.
Is USB fine for 16 channels? With my maths 16channels at 24bit at 48Khz is below 19mbit/s which would still be easily doable with usb 2.0 (480mbit/s).
So what am I looking for in both soundcards and speakers, the room isnt extremely large, the listing area will be just a 4 person wide sofa, the room is rougly 5.5x5.5 meters total, pretty high 3.4m ceilings however.
Like it should be “reference grade” listening which is a difficult term, lets say i am more looking towards the KRK/yamaha/ Home cinema enthusiast/ side of the budget scope and not at the “klein&Hummel” “neumann” “genelec” side. But yea I know its all in all going to run me like 10K€ - is what i would sort of expect to be able to play in this league. is that about right? If you have any concrete reccomendations let me know #gearslutz
(edit just saw the small genelec 8010s are just 300€/piece, even a 7.1.4 setup of those wont really break the bank… but are nearfield monitors a good choice? or should i be lookig at passive home cinema stuff and then buy just a X channel amp?)
Director should be able to listen to the atmos and be able to judge it well, but in the end we are not the sound studio.
Interesting, didn’t realize Resolve had that built in. But in hind-sight not a surprise, since it wants to play in the DAW playground with it’s Fairlight page. So it’s a bit of a hybrid. Flame has decent audio tools as vfx goes, but isn’t meant to be a DAW.
USB should be fine for multiple outputs. Depends a bit on the OS. I’ve found USB audio interfaces on Mac to be rock solid, on Windows there can be issues that cause crackle with interrupt priorities being all horked up. I tried a dedicated audiophile USB root controller (it’s entertaining to see what people build there and claim what makes a difference). In the end I switched to Thunderbolt to stay out of the USB fray, but it came with new trade-offs. Not sure where Linux is in this field. But definitely pay attention to your USB tree hierarchy.
In terms of speakers, really comes down to what kind of budget you allocate to keeping this client happy and maybe get new / similar ones with this capability. Can’t go wrong with Genelecs, but might be just fine with JBLs or something like that. With the channel count going up, even small price differences add up. Yes, Gearspace (now politically correct) is a good place to get ideas on that from folks that do that regularly.
Ah yea, it probably just needs to look flashy and professional so that screams genelec…
Would go nubert otherwise
Sounds about right now trying to find a interface with 16 outs without ada…
fascinating - learning a lot here!
I believe the latest version of Resolve is capable of properly authoring a Dolby Vision & Dolby Atmos file that you can then access via USB, iCloud or whichever way you want to get it to your TV with Atmos sound system.
It has become harder to validate using Flame over Resolve as a mastering tool for longform. The interface, ease of use and ability to do super fast cleanup in Flame is awesome and all, plus I even prefer Flame’s text tool for end credits and titles, but now it is all about mastering IMFs with IAB audio, the only way to do it in Flame is to create a gold master with some kind of audio mix down for client approval, that you then load into Resolve/Transkoder (hard to justify the money for that too now) to create your versions. An additional step that probably isn’t necessary. So we’re tending to finish in Resolve now. Fusion is fine for simple cleanup and we just create titles outside of Resolve and import them. Resolves cache system is still pretty bad though.
Back to Atmos though. Netflix, Amazon Studios and Disney all list approved Atmos monitoring devices, similar as to how they do for Dolby HDR grading monitors. Just look on their websites.
dante still gives me goosebumps, but yea much cleaner for
sure, might be an option.
ok cool, if you find anything on that direct atmos output … let me know I cant find anything. That would make stuff a lot
easier for playback if i could somehow output a packed “dolby digital plus” or whatever packed format dolby uses on appleTV and such.
ah gou mean render and then playback… nah thats boring haha i want it live !
agree on everything else you said
Ah. That IP based is Dante and not AES.
If you use Dante with networked amps, do you still need a hardware audio interface to go from DAW/OS to Dante, or can this now all be done in software?
Regarding 16 channel interfaces - if you can use Thunderbolt, the X16 is worth looking at. I use the X8 and it’s a very versatile and solid interface. You can also daisy chain up to 3 interfaces for additional outputs that are managed as one.
https://www.uaudio.com/audio-interfaces/apollo-x16.html
The X16 uses DB25 outputs, the X8 TSR.
One nice thing is that it can handle surround monitoring and monitor control right in the control app, though only up to 7.1. You get up to 7.1 volume, dim, and fold-down in the control room, and you can calibrate your spl levels in the interface rather than having to do it in a separate monitor controller, amp, or active speaker.
the calibration part sounds nice, that would probably be worth the investment… You mind laying out a calibration workflow for a atmos system ? Is it just delays to account for distance to make all the sound emitted from each speaker hits the person at the right/same time? this and spl, so I take a spl meter and set every speaker to the right spl using whitenoise? I mean I can just dial that on the back of the active speaker and have it set there forever, or no?
I have used all the ua gear before so i know it works well, I always just moved between different studios (back when I was doing a bit more audio stuff… mostly hip hop/rap producing and recording…) Most studios had the apollos so it was easy to take my ableton session with me on my laptop and just go boom → done
the thing that a bit hit/miss is thunderbolt support with this stuff in linux… but nothing can ever be easy ;-).
What actually looks cheap and cheerfull is the Motu 24Ao , it has no inputs - just 24 balanced outputs - and runs on USB (I am very aware of dpc latency and all that crap on windows, so it would be mac first for anything that is even touching atmos)
Wait. Back it up…
