Information on how to create and apply 3rd-order ambisonics in Pro Tools to enable additional channels for 9.1.6 speaker setups.
In this article:
Setting up Dolby Atmos Renderer
One of the ways Dolby Atmos Renderer can communicate with Pro Tools Ultimate (2022.9 or newer) is by using Pro Tools Audio Bridge. Pro Tools Audio Bridge is a virtual core audio device that is installed with Pro Tools on macOS (available on macOS 11 or newer). While it can be used as your main playback engine, it was designed to be used as an Aux I/O device that can send and receive audio with other applications. Please note, that this option does not support automatic delay compensation outside of Pro Tools. In order to make Aux I/O work, first, you will need to go to Dolby Atmos Renderer settings and select 'CoreAudio' as the audio driver, and select 'Pro Tools Audio Bridge 16' as the audio output device:
Setting up Pro Tools I/O
- Create a new Pro Tools session
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After creating the session, go to Setup > I/O..., select the Bus tab, and create a New path -
choose “3rd order ambisonics” with Auto-create sub paths checked
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Select the Output tab and add “3rd level ambisonics” output with Add default channel assignments checked
- Select the Input tab, click on Aux I/O... and enable Pro Tools Audio Bridge 16 inputs
Creating buses in Pro Tools
- Create a “3rd order ambisonics” Master Fader and set its output to 3rd level ambisonics output you’ve created earlier in I/O settings
- Create 16 Mono Aux Input tracks
- Set the Aux track outputs to 3rd order ambisonics output channels 00 to 15
- Set the Aux track inputs to Pro Tools Audio Bridge channels 1 to 16
- Load a SoundID Reference plugin on the master bus (3rd order ambisonics output) and load your calibration profile. It is recommended to check the channel routing and calibration curve assignment so that the right channel from an Atmos Renderer is sent to the right Speaker channel, and that the right calibration curve is applied to the right channel. For more details on this topic, we recommend going through this guide: Setting up with multichannel DAW plugin
As an alternative, you can export the calibration profile for Dolby Atmos Renderer Mastering Suite. For a detailed guide, visit this article: Setting up on Dolby Atmos Renderer Mastering Suite
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