I was beside myself with joy when they announced that WaveLab Pro would finally be the alternative to DA3 I’ve been begging for. For the past 7 years, I’ve had to mix in Nuendo on our main PC w/ the external Dolby RMU > Render an ADM in DAR > Import the ADM and Stereo Master into DA3 > Sync the ADM as close to the master as possible in the worst possible UI for syncing > Export a new ADM > Copy to Media Cloud/Dropbox > Load both masters into Nuendo > Sync the stereo master to the ADM down to +/-1sample OR Switch renderer to Nuendo native, reduce buffer > Sync ADM to stereo in Nuendo > Import the new ADM and check to ensure sync is within 1 sample.
I don’t think I used WaveLab Pro 12 more than twice because mastering the stereo mix in yet another program was getting to be too much of a hassle. We probably wouldn’t have ever upgraded or even updated WL Pro in the Atmos mastering room ever again, but then WaveLab Pro became the answer to my prayers- FINALLY, not only a better way to trim and sync clients’ pair of masters, but actually master the ADMs to better match the stereo masters sonically. DA3 offers a limiter, comp, and EQ, but the basic rule in the industry has always been to go back address things in the project if you ever have to use them, in part because they suck. Granted, its still a good general rule to follow, but now I can apply the same tape emulation, plugin version of the bus comp (I mix Atmos music hybrid, but I don’t have 63 SSL blackface G-Comps for analog bus compression of ADMs lol). We’re about to release our first high-end 9.1.6 plugin and this makes me glad we added the mastering tools that seemed pointless at the time.
Now, with my praise out of the way, HOW DO I GET BINAURAL PLAYBACK??
In Audio Connections, I have:
Speaker 1: Dolby Atmos > 7.1.4 > Ch.1 -Ch.12
Speaker 2: Dolby Atmos > Binaural > Ch.13 & Ch.14
Speaker 3: Dolby Atmos > Stereo > Ch.1 & Ch.2
WaveLab’s native renderer on the last bus in Inspector (which WL Pro adds automatically when creating a Dolby Atmos project.
Native Renderer > Output Format:
- 7.1.4 + Speaker Configuration 1 = Playback on our amazing 7.2.4 PMC & Augspurger system
- Binaural + Speaker Configuration 2 = No Audio playback whatsoever
- Stereo + Speaker Configuration 3 = Stereo Playback
I double-checked Dante Controller and confirmed that it is switched from the RMU configuration to the native playback profile with the 512x512 channel Dante PCIe card routed directly to the MTRX (DAC/monitor controller) with the first 12 channels going to the 7.2.4 speaker channels and channels 13 and 14 routed to the RedNet Am2 headphone amp.
What am I forgetting to do? I have some very subtle mastering to do right now and I need be able to double-check the binaural playback before I render a new ADM. Not being able to check the BIN downmix until I open the ADM in the RMU to print the QC MP4 and re-renders is bound to bite me in the ass eventually if I keep doing this without headphones. So, I need to fix this ASAP.
