In Studio
Explore how artists and producers create immersive music from songwriting to the final mix.
Immersive music can be made in many ways. The first step is finding the setup that fits your workflow, whether you're composing, tracking, mixing or all of the above. Headphones get you started anywhere, while a speaker setup gives you the full experience.
How to set up?
A laptop and a pair of headphones
Especially when composing or creating a basic mix, you can monitor your immersive production virtually on headphones. The simplest setup uses a standard pair of headphones and software that renders the mix binaurally. The main advantage is that it needs no special hardware beyond what you already use. It even lets you compare different rendering systems simply by switching the software that creates the binaural monitoring signal. On a laptop, it's the ultimate mobile setup.
Software-based binaural rendering is built into certain DAWs (the Dolby Atmos Renderer in Pro Tools, Apple Spatial Audio in Logic Pro) and available as commercial or free plugins (APL Virtuoso, Neumann RIME, Genelec Aural ID, Auro-3D Export). All of these offer at least good generic binaural processing, using generalised HRTF filters, with or without room simulation for extra realism.
Some tools also offer more personalized rendering, e.g., with support for the SOFA format, in case you have your own HRTF measurements available. Tools like Sony’s VME (360 Virtual Mixing Environment) even require a personal profile, which is measured on site in your studio, or at various partner facilities. The advantage here is that these systems then render the immersive sound with your own measured HRTF data, greatly improving the realism of the virtual reproduction.
Headtracking is another method even further enhancing the realism of the binaural rendering. In many scenarios, this then requires a specific pair of headphones (brand and/or type), with built-in sensors to detect the head movements and send this information to the compatible rendering software. For instance, Apple Spatial Audio monitoring adds head tracking when used with the Apple Airpods Max. Alternatively, some binaural plugins also support the use of head tracking hardware that can be added to any regular pair of headphones, such as the Supperware Head Tracker 1, making this a more open, but less integrated solution that will only work with specialized software (e.g., plug-ins that also advertise this compatibility but not Apple Music).
Another headtracking solution uses the built-in camera of your laptop or an external webcam to detect the head movements. APL Virtuoso, for example, uses their HeadTrek software solution to add head tracking to their binaural reproduction.
Finally, there are also headphone systems that have their own hardware audio interface to connect to the computer, via USB, e.g., as in Areal’s SR-1 headphone monitoring system. The main downside of systems with dedicated hardware is the fact that these become less suitable for mobile scenarios.
For more information on mixing on headphones for immersive sound (in this case, Dolby Atmos Music), see also https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/mixing-dolby-atmos-on-headphones-a-professional-guide.
Loudspeakers
While composing and mixing Immersive Music on headphones is certainly a valid way of working, it only gets you so far in providing the full experience created when using a full immersive discrete speaker setup, with 6 to 16 speakers.
To drive these speakers, a multichannel audio interface with enough outputs is needed. Some of these soundcards, like the ones from RME or Neumann, have built-in DSP processing that allows you to control the volume of the complete speaker setup, but many do not have these capabilities. In that case, an additional volume controller is advised. This can be a fully hardware-based solution, or a software solution controlled by, e.g., MIDI or OSC.
The minimal setup to monitor Immersive Music is typically built using 6 speakers: 2 in front, 2 in the back and 2 as height speakers, which can be mounted above the front speakers or alternatively as Top Middle (Ltm/Rtm) speakers above the listening position. Such a system allows you to hear the panning positions in the surround field (front-to-back) but only provides a very limited vertical experience. It also lacks the Center and Subwoofer channels, which may be useful depending on the requirements of the production.
Nowadays, it is very common to use a 7.1.4 setup, with 12 speakers, or its smaller 5.1.4 sibling with 10 speakers. These have 4 height speakers, 2 in front and 2 in the back, enabling a full 3D space to be reproduced around the listening position. The Center and Subwoofer channels then provide additional creative possibilities as they are very commonly available in standard home setups, soundbars, headphones and in cars.
For the more demanding situations, 9.1.6 with 16 speakers is becoming increasingly used, adding two Wide speakers between the Front and Surround speakers, as well as two Top Mid speakers (the same as in the 6-channel version described earlier).
For best results, it is important to monitor your work on a fully calibrated setup. This means that at least the level and delay of the signals going to each speaker is adjusted so that the sound from each of them arrives at the same time and level main listening position. This can be achieved in various ways depending on the selection of the audio interface and room calibration hardware (e.g, Trinnov NOVA) or software tool (e.g. Sonarworks SoundID Reference Multichannel). The latter two solutions also compensate for possible negative influences from the room’s acoustics (reflections, standing waves, etc.), using EQ or more complex filtering, further improving the reliability of your monitor setup.
