Hugh Neal’s top 10 tips for Dolby Atmos mixing

Music Hackspace tutor Hugh Neal has 20 years of industry experience, having mixed at top London studios such as Abbey Road and Metropolis, working with renowned artists like James and Paul McCartney. As the course leader for our new Certified Courses program Complete Guide to Dolby Atmos for Commercial Music Production, we asked him to share his top 10 tips for Dolby Atmos mixing. 

1 – File Management and organisation

Get your files and audio properly organised and copied to the relevant folders. Make sure you know where all the relevant audio for the upcoming session is to be located should you need to add any additional audio later. Also, BACK IT UP, if you are not in the habit yet, you should really get this into a regular habit. Don’t just wait till you’re finished to back up! I’ve seen this go very badly wrong before.

2 – Get your session organised

I have a tendency to do all the “admin” organisation work before any mixing begins. So all my possible busses, routing, sends etc that I think I potentially will need, can be set up ready to go. I have a specific project I can import session data from which covers every possible variable I might encounter in a mix. I also have a colour format and specific order of audio tracks to help efficiency within the mix. Doing this even the day before, I find frees my mind up to allow for complete creative flow when I actually start to mix the project.

3 – Be familiar with your session’s audio stems for the mix

Take the time to familiarise yourself with all of the audio that has been provided for the mix (NB this is really only mainly applicable if you are mixing from an outside source, ie audio tracks prepared for mix, although it can be useful to do on your own productions if you haven’t gone through everything in a while) I find this process helps me to identify any rogue audio tracks that may have slipped into the session or split tracks up that might be better suited if they are processed separately. It also can be that you can potetially delete any audio tracks that may have accidently doubled up in the export or production process. Either way, you are now more prepared to start building the mix more confidently than having sounds coming from all over the place when you hit play.

4 – Set out an idea of the level of your special mix environment

This can be a very useful step, Identifying the potential special environment you are going to mix toward, plus now being familiar with your audio will allow you to begin to build up your mix without getting cluttered or overwhelmed. It also enables you to keep checking back that you are on your intended path but be aware that all good plans can change. You may find that as you begin to build your special mix, the special sentiment may change so don’t get too hung up on the initial plan. 

5 – LFE management in the session

Be mindful of this bad boy, it’s easy to get carried away. LFE can really help your low end and weight, but good control over this is crucial. I advise you adopt an LFE approach you can easily adjust and control as the session develops. Having the LFE as an AUX send in the session can be very useful as you can adjust and even automate should you require. 

6 – Be mindful of your headroom!

In Dolby Atmos, we will not know what the final playback format our end user will use, so as a result, we need to be very mindful of the headroom we occupy in the mix. We have strict delivery requirements that we cannot overshoot when it comes to final submission. In a full 7.1.4 mix, we will have multiple streams of audio available to enable lots of perceptible headroom space but as we fold down to 5.1 and finally down to Binaural 2.0 the headroom is very different at each stage, so to be mindful of what audio we place in and around space would be a wise consideration. 

NB: the Renderer uses a 5.1 fold-down to monitor and track the LUFS level, so really we are only fully considering the headroom in LUFS from 5.1 downwards.

 7 – When using speakers, check the different fold downs.

This is tricky obviously if you are only using headphones, although a very large portion of Atmos listeners are currently listening exclusively on headphones, there are more and more Atmos-ready devices coming onto the market. So like when mixing in stereo and checking your mono mix, it is strongly advised to have someone or yourself check the mix fold-downs to see if your mix is translating according to your overall vision.

8 – Keep an eye on the LUFS

We have two targets for LUFS levels in an Atmos Render File, one for the main speaker array fold-downs and one for the binaural headphone fold-down. It most cases these work pretty much in tandem but as mentioned before with the headroom, there can be some discrepancy between these targets than we would like if we did not get into the habit of keeping an eye on them during the mix. It can be a pain to try and level off a slightly “over ” headphone LUFS reading when the main mix levels are a solid LUFS and sounding good. It’s a lot easier to just keep an eye on these levels as we progress through the mix.

9 – Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should!

There is a very real possibility we can overdo the “specialness” of an Atmos mix, I always work with the mantra “for the good of the song” if I feel elements are being placed or automated that distract from eth song or piece of music’s intent, maybe I should consider reigning it in little. It’s easy to get carried away when we have so much space to play with. Sometimes the intention of more is potentially better but sometimes we may also want to consider the old adage of “less is more”

10 – Don’t be afraid to keep it simple

There can be a real tendency to feel like we need to fill the space of an Atmos mix with all manner of exciting movement and effects but sometimes the simple approach can have more drama, effect and believability to the listeners perception than we may consider. There will usually be an Atmos moment/s in the arrangement where we can use the medium to really accentuate the depth, width and height but for the most part, simplicity can be so very effective. Placing the listener into a simple sonic blanket that they can meld into can be more powerful than a thousand effects wising around for the sake of it.