Shawn Dealey on Dolby Atmos

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Ever since its announcement, I have been interested in learning
more about Dolby Atmos. I was skeptical at first, primarily
because of my experience with “Quad” back in the 1970s. That
4-channel concept never gain any popularity with either the
listening public nor in the recording community. I presumed that
Atmos would be similar, just more speakers. The early demo
sessions I attended left me convinced that this was going to be
another dead end, like Quad. The early mixes I heard were
gimmicky and did not serve the musical intent of the artist well.


But as I was exposed to mixers who really understood how to use
the expanded format, my interest increased. And for the public? I
never thought there would be much market acceptance of a system
that required many speakers. But Dolby was smart about their
implementation. The system knows how many speakers you have and
creates a version that fits your hardware.


There’s more to Atmos, however, because of certain psychoacoustic
processing that goes on, the resulting mix, in any format down to
plain stereo, sounds better, with more detail and separation of
sounds. I hear more things in an Atmos mix, even in headphones,
than I did in the stereo mix.


Shawn Dealey is the chief engineer at Sweetwater Studios in
Indiana. I have been involved with several mixing projects with
Shawn over the past couple of years, and I think he has an
effective approach to interpreting the producer/artist/engineer’s
intent, and making it into an improved version.


In this episode, I talk with Shawn about his evolution as he
explores the new format. I learned a lot from Shawn, and I think
you will, too.


This episode was recorded at Sweetwater Studio B, the main Atmos
mixing room. We used AEA 44 mics, a VT-2 mic preamp, and a VT-7
compressor, the same chain I use for recording most episodes.


Thanks for listening. If you have any questions, comments, or
suggestions, please pass them along to me at dwfearn@dwfearn.com


email: dwfearn@dwfearn.com
www.youtube.com/c/DWFearn
https://dwfearn.com/