Hey audiophiles, I've been wanting to do this for awhile now. Back in 2021 when I wrote about "Spatial Audio" music streaming on Apple Music, in the back of my mind I was thinking it would be pretty cool to not just listen to the music and consider whether this kind of content is worthy of audiophile exploration, but to actually fire up a DAW (digital audio workstation) and play around with Dolby Atmos myself to create a little something that I can also use as a demo or to help with set-up in my own room.
Nothing too fancy of course since the intent is to demo spatial capability rather than wow the listener with overly complex sounds or movements. It's also a fun way for me to learn how to use the software and to go a bit deeper into 3D audio - beyond just expressing opinions on the consumption side.
So, over the Spring Break with a little more time available, I bought a copy of DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 (currently US$300) and got to work on figuring out how to author some 3D audio content. The price is very reasonable for such a powerful piece of software which I plan to use in other audio/video projects. Other packages that allow Atmos audio mastering include Avid's ProTools, Steinberg's Nuendo and Cubase, Ableton Live, Apple's Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro.
Once I figured out how the Fairlight "audio console" module in DaVinci Resolve worked and got the immersive pieces authored, a friend who works in audio professionally helped with the Dolby Media Encoder (US$400/year subscription) side to bring the track over to Dolby Digital Plus / EAC3-JOC, TrueHD-Atmos, and AC-4 IMS.