[FR] Dolby Atmos support.

I’ve seen a provision for Auro 3D support inside Nuendo 6.5, but no Dolby Atmos support.

More the VST Auro-3D plugin is not yet available, so the Nuendo Auro-3D provision is useless right now.

Auro 3D is not yet a very common format. Dolby Atmos is more supported, and seems to me technically superior because it does allow to virtualize the 3D audio mix from the reproduction channels.

According to Wikipedia :

For pro theaters, as of december 2014 there is only 550 Auro-3D installations, and as of february 2015 there is about 2000 Dolby Atmos installations.

For home theaters, Auro 3D is only available on Denon receivers as an expensive paied add on, when Dolby Atmos is here as default starting on the AVR-X4100W receiver.
I can confirm that it is possible to watch Dolby Atmos movies in a home theater, as i tried this myself. It’s not complicated at all. Just add a couple height speakers and it’s ok. No need for a new blu ray player, just disable the stream filter so that the raw audio stream is passed to the HDMI output.

There is no Auro 3D video blu ray, when there are a few Dolby Atmos blu ray right now.

The benefit of 3D surround formats is not questionable. It really does add a surround experience that give you a better immersion in the movie.

Hopefully we’ll see a 3D panner inside Nuendo 7 so that we can start to experiment and produce 3D mixes.

Even if the Atmos encoder is not available now, a discrete 3D panner implementation would allow to start experimenting with 3D mixing.


Protools does have it.

+1

I will add that when you did see a movie with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, you are frustrated when going back to 5.1 or 7.1.

I feel that 3D sound is even more important than 3D video for a good immersion in the movie.

+1

Definitely needs to be added in future versions.

A spatial remapping plugin for output buses would be usefull as well, because Atmos and Auro 3D speaker placements are fully incompatible.

At least this would give the possibility to mix for Auro 3D and Atmos using the same room.

Only largest studios have the financial capability to build different theaters for each format or to build a dual speaker setup arrangement in the same room.

See here for a description of the Atmos / Auro 3D compatibility problems, and a remapping solution offered by Trinnov.

http://www.trinnov.com/products/high-end/altitude32/technology/technology-the-new-reference-for-3d-sound/

And an interesting video explaining differences between Atmos and Auro 3D.