So which of these would you recommend?
https://www.google.com/search?q=blu-ray+burner+software+for+atmos+format&rlz=1C1VDKB_enUS1067US1068&oq=blu-ray&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggCEEUYOzIGCAAQRRg7MgYIARBFGDkyBggCEEUYOzIGCAMQRRg7MgcIBBAAGIAEMgcIBRAAGIAEMgcIBhAAGIAEMgcIBxAAGIAEMgcICBAAGIAEMgcICRAAGIAE0gEONjgzNzY5MzkxajBqMTWoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
That’s the Windows settings. For Atmos, however, we transmit the audio signal via bitstream. Therefore the settings are made in MPC-HC. If everything is configured correctly in MPC-HC, it will work. Even if everything is set to stereo in the Windows settings.
But while you are in the Windows settings: please change the default driver from Realtek to the display driver. (The green check mark should be visible at “HD Audio Driver for …”.)
Before Nuendo allowed video rendering, I was using Sony (now Magix) Vegas to do quick prints for client approval. I was really surprised that Vegas wasn’t supporting the immersive platform. When I asked them why, they said that they couldn’t get a licensing deal with Dolby! Furthermore, the one they had was now disolved and you could no longer even do simple 5.1 ac3 surround prints via DVD Architect! So, now all the film makers & video editors are being forced over to DaVinci Resolve.
It’s like all the “Evil” corporations have finally gotten into position to execute their master plan for world domination (Avid shut down Euphonix & SmartAV then partnered with Dolby to BLOCK ALL OF US USING OMF. BMD bought Fairlight and partnered with Avid & Dolby in this unholy Trinity, while Yamaha whimped out on Nuage an ran off. The only one who couldn’t make the cut was Waves, when the backlash to their subscription only BS blew back in their faces. So the trinity left them as collateral dammage.) and now us Content Creators are totally screwed, 'cause squeezing the life out of any reasonable budget apparently wasn’t enough! 
- As suggested above, please change your default audio driver to
“HD Audio Driver for Display Audio” in the Windows system settings. - Please start MPC-HC.
- Press “o” on your keyboard. The preferences should open now.
I have made screenshots of the settings on my laptop:
I can’t give recommendations for programs I don’t know. 
The important thing is that the program accepts the necessary file formats for exporting. At least: TrueHD (MLP), E-AC-3, MKV, MP4, H264. It is not necessary for the app to be able to process “Atmos”. "Atmos is not a standalone audio format, but is encoded in E-AC-3 or MLP.
GOT IT!!! 
Thank you so much!! I can finally listen to the mix in ATMOS/SURROUND on my home theater. I really appreciate your patience getting me there and I’m really sorry that it fell to you and not the companies who sold us this stuff! But I thank you again and again.
If we didn’t have this community, we’d be lost! 
Nobody has mentioned it up until this point, but the MP4 that the Atmos renderer exports DOES have several video options (at least in the newest release): Black video, no video or an external video file (with identical timecode). However, there is nothing ensuring that the video is BluRay compliant, and that can potentially cause issues if it’s just dumped on a disc.
Also, the audio exported by the renderer is Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos at a max of 768kb, NOT any form of TrueHD. It’s purposely gimped so you can’t really use the tracks for any kind of professional release. To get a TrueHD encode or higher quality DD+, you gotta use the Dolby Encoding Engine, and Dolby keeps the gate around that software pretty tight.
I’m glad it’s finally working after all this trouble. Then my “mission” was successful after all. 
(I should charge Dolby for supporting their products. After all, you were on the verge of defecting to rival Sony 360 Reality Audio. 
)
Earlier I mentioned this information: The external renderer only plays an E-AC-3 JOC track. Due to the number of posts in the last few days, this information has probably been lost.
And I am sure that Dolby deliberately restricted the export function. (The same reason will probably prevent Nuendo, for example, from having such an export function in the future. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong.) However, most Atmos tracks are streamed these days. E-AC-3 JOC is the standard for Netflix & Co. If the goal was to sell more encoders (DEE/DME), this may not be as successful as hoped. 
I think they’d sell more copies if they made it easier to get a hold of. They were nowhere near this locked down back in the Dolby Digital days.
True. Even Steinberg had its own Dolby Digital encoder.
Nevertheless, Dolby has managed to overtake DTS again with Atmos. (DTS isn’t really any better now, though, when it comes to the things discussed here. In fact, DTS is worse.) On DVD, Dolby was the undisputed leader with its codec. But on Blu-ray, DTS is the benchmark. Now, with object-based audio, it’s Dolby who’s got the upper hand again (we’ve yet to produce a single disc with a DTS:X soundtrack.)
By the way, “we” have only ourselves to blame for this misery: MPEG-H is a free and unrestricted alternative to Atmos and DTS:X.
And… Who else on the forum is using MPEG-H?
I mean, who besides us?
Well, I suppose the content creators (IP owners), theaters and distributors make the calls here. They have far more leverage than anyone else.
From one perspective I can see the point in this - get people to pay more money for fancy new (Atmos) stuff. More money that goes into the creation space is better for us. Of course it’s not great if we have to pony up for gear and can’t make that back, but still…
I’ve just spent an enjoyable 15 minutes reading this thread! I too have the exact same issue. I have a client who I have done 5.1 and Atmos mixes for and he has asked how he can play my ATMOS mixes in his home theatre setup.
So to summarise this thread, there is currently no straight forward way to share ATMOS mixes with clients? Someone I know uses this method:
- Convert to TrueHD using Dolby Media Encode
- Embed into an MKV video file using ‘audiomuxer’
This can then be played on some USB enable blu-ray players or via HDMI out of laptops as discussed here.
So am I right in saying all we need to do is shell out $400 a year for the Dolby Media Encoder licence and the above will work? Does anyone know how easy it is to get hold of this software, or as @minnjd mentioned, Dolby have ‘the gates around that pretty tight’?
Regarding the issue of sharing 5.1 ISOs, I had the same frustrations (being a windows user) with DVD Architect. However, there is a very cheap (no longer developed) DVD authoring application ‘DVD Lab-Pro’ that supports DTS (the old, vanilla lossy DTS but I think it still sounds good). So I can quickly and easily encode my 5.1 to DTS and share an audio only DVD-V ISO with my clients to listen on their home theatres.
Definitely not straightforward. You might be able to put the DD+ file from the renderer on a BluRay with a suitable video file, but I haven’t tried that since BluRay based Atmos has been TrueHD only as far as I know.
The software is probably pretty easy for larger media companies to get, however I’m a sole proprietor weekend warrior, so their initial response was “no”. But then a sales manager contacted me asking why I wanted to evaluate the software, so at least they’re willing to talk.
So how big is the Sony 360 market compared to ATMOS? Not looking forward to “Beta v VHS War!”
Also how similar/different are the authoring platforms with regards to Nuendo intergration?
I think it is more likely to be a Beta vs Extra Secret Beta war… in that I think immersive audio for music is not likely to become a thing for a lot of reasons. I think it is going to be a fad that will fade away. Immersive audio for movies is probably here to stay, and sadly Dolby won that war before it ever started.
I suspect that you are correct in your assessment! 
Atmos in theaters has a place and does solve some of the issues that have dogged theatrical sound for a long time. Home theater wise, not so much (in my opinion), and in both cases, true Atmos (with multiple speakers) is rather expensive to implement. It would cost upwards of $75k to upgrade the 104 seat, 7.1 theater that I manage to an Atmos system. That’s really not worth it.
I’m not sure it’s going away for music though. This Atmos initiative doesn’t really ask anything extra of the consumer, as they’ll still listen to the music on their AirPods. The onus is on the content creators, and as long as Dolby has Apple and Spotify on board dictating it’s use, then they don’t have much of a choice.
I actually think the main obstacle in getting Atmos to proliferate in the home is aesthetics. It gets expensive if you want to hide the speakers, and the speakers have to be hidden because in a “normal mainstream” home or apartment you just can’t have speakers visible hanging down from the ceiling. Lamps are ok, and fans, maybe plants, but not speakers. Then wiring of course, or wireless.
But I suppose that’s slightly beside the point.
Wow - it took me some time to catch up with this interesting discussion.
Am in line with the main conclusions here (… it is very hard to check the result in real …), and also that Dolby puts a lot of smoke&mirrors around to provide a decent and straight forward tool flow .
Have been through it my way. Ended up in currently using a mix of some power-shell scripts having somewhat sophisticated ffmpeg-scripting embedded. Result is an mkv-file with video+multi-audiotracks. Can be played on my home theater BR-Player via USB-Stick. Audio tracks are selectable via the BR-Player menu.
Would be very interested in a tool to create such things like “Pure Audio BluRay”. This is sound (multiple tracks) plus a menu. No video.
An other problem I ran into is, that Macbooks (perhaps any Mac) do not support Bitstream output. Found a somewhat pricey plugin enabling that. Never tested it.
Regards and have a nice Sunday,
Juergi
Following up on my earlier post.
Dolby granted me access to a 30 day trial of the encoding engine, and it has two different options for Dolby Digital Plus: a streaming option that puts out an .ec3 file, or a Blu Ray option that puts out an .eb3 file. So it looks like the audio track in the MP4 that the Atmos renderer outputs will most likely NOT work on a Blu Ray without some kind of conversion. Although BD Wizard accepted the .ec3 file so who knows.
We would like to use MPEG-H as a codec more often. But for Blu-ray or UHD BDs, the codec is not currently usable: Only a few weeks ago, Denon updated its current AV receivers/AV amplifiers to decode MPEG-H. In other words, a maximum of 5% of all consumers will be able to decode this codec. The hardware is simply not there at the moment. So MPEG-H will probably suffer the same fate as DTS:X: “Life punishes those who come too late”.
This is correct. DD+ (E-AC-3) works quite differently on Blu-ray than DD+ for streaming. This is for compatibility reasons. DD+ on Blu-ray works more like DTS: there is a 5.1 AC-3 core (maximum 640 kbps) that can be played on hardware that cannot decode E-AC-3. The “DD+” extension can only be played on compatible hardware. In this case the rear channels of the AC-3 core are replaced by channels with a higher resolution and/or a higher number of channels (maximum 7.1). During playback, the core and extension are combined into a final stream with a maximum bit rate of 1664 kbps.
The E-AC-3 variant for Blu-ray (.eb3) can currently only be encoded with the Dolby Media Encoder (DME).
To create a Pure Audio Disc, the Blu-ray must be programmed in Java (BD-J). For example, the HDMV standard cannot access the coloured buttons on the remote control. This can only be done using Java.
Java is only implemented in the more expensive authoring tools (e.g. Scenarist BD, Blu-print, KITe Java, DoStudio EX).
We have created some Pure Audio Blu-rays. Once the Java code is written, it can be easily and flexibly adapted to the project.