Musings on Dolby Atmos & Low Budget Sound

[Bill Sepaniak]

RIP: Ray Dolby. Born 18 January 1933. Died 12 September 2013.

 

[PatrickFaith]

RIP: Ray Dolby. Born 18 January 1933. Died 12 September 2013.

Going through my old post ... I've never read a biography on Dolby ... i bet it would be very interesting. I think i'll try and search for something.

On a *update* note, for my film here's my record chain i'm using:

"indoors" CM67 (a u67 clone) -> retro powers strip (a tube equalizer) -> retro sta-level (a old tube compressor, johny_cash/neil_young/nirvana_unplugged feel) -> 744t set at 24 bits/96 kHz
[i use m149 for indoor foley work]
"outside" mkh 20 -> 744t with 24 bits/96 kHz (sound design mainly, i use a parabola on anything more then 10 feet away making sure the background of where the parabola is pointed, is not a reflective surface)

I basically do all my music and sound in mono.

Sound design & mix in protools hd, about 512 tracks with a lot of mono stems running at 96 kHz 32 bit float. Everything is in the box at this time, using a lot of the izotope plugins mixed with slate stuff, to create the sound design for the animated characters (most sound design of the animated characters is based off the the "indoor" tracks of manipulated samples from a guitar, piano and cello).

I will be sending the 32 bit float/96 kHz stems to mastering(so i won't do this myself). I want a master in Atmos as well as Auro (I have a bunch of scenes where the height layout of Auro really connects with the story, I lean to preferring Auro which will also give me a 7.1 - this entire mastering/re-recording step is in the air at the moment). So far I am able to maintain the quality that i want, with this fairly simple setup and workflow. I btw use Equator D8's for monitoring and a mac to do all the in the box mixing. Using the whole suite of Izotope plugins is giving me what i want to modify the samples to create the animated character interactions. The film has a "folky" animation feel, so this NOS (New Old School) 1940 type of workflow seems to be fitting the story fairly well and feels right with the monochrome epic footage. Sound cost is coming in at around $100k production&post (not including re-recording/mastering/finishing). As a qualifier, this is a fairly time consuming approach, for films that take 3-5 years to make, so in the time VS quality VS cost i have chosen quality & cost but have taken a big hit on time.

Things I'd change but the train has left the station: I really like some of the ribbon mics like the KU4 ... but my room acoustics aren't that great and it wouldn't work for all the scenes ... so it is something i'd really like to ponder in future movies but one of those things that i can't see happen right now. I also like the older tape Nagra field recorders, but again the sound device is doing fine and it's just a bit too much for me to deal with at this moment(if i had to do it all again i could have saved some money on gone with the old nagra's, also I am barely using a bunch of my modern mic's that I bought for the film like the tlm 67).