Fiedler Audio Mastering Console & gravitas MDS

Screen 1: The Mastering Console Options window.

This combination of software and multi‑channel plug‑in overcomes some frustrating hurdles for those working in Atmos.

Back in SOS September 2023, I reviewed Fiedler Audio’s unique and innovative Dolby Atmos Composer plug‑in suite, and now, with the launch of their Dolby Atmos Mastering Console and associated gravitas MDS module, Fiedler have again come up with something that can’t easily be found anywhere else in the Dolby Atmos landscape. Before I describe what Fiedler’s Mastering Console and gravitas MDS plug‑in can do, it might help if I spend a paragraph or two describing what a typical Dolby Atmos workflow can’t do — or at least what it struggles with.

Atmos Challenges

With stereo mix work, we take it for granted that, at the end of the DAW, there’s always the stereo master bus on which we can apply some global EQ, compression, limiting or whatever takes our fancy, to give a final polish to our mix (even though we know we probably ought to be leaving at least some of that to a separate mastering stage!). Things are very different in the Atmos world. Firstly, an Atmos mix typically comprises beds and objects. Beds are conventionally panned elements spread, typically, over a 7.1.2 channel width, and objects are mono elements (or stereo elements effectively treated as two independent mono signals) that are panned according to dynamic metadata that defines their intended instantaneous X, Y and Z position in space. Notwithstanding that multi‑channel EQ, compressor or limiter plug‑ins that can be inserted on a 7.1.2 bed bus are somewhat niche, even if you had and used one, the plug‑in wouldn’t ‘see’ the object channels because they’re separately routed to the Dolby Atmos Renderer (the discrete application that compiles the beds, objects and metadata into a Dolby Atmos output package called an ADM). So you can’t easily apply an output bus compressor or EQ to an Atmos mix. This is where Fiedler Audio’s Dolby Atmos Mastering Console and associated gravitas plug‑in come in...

A Dolby Atmos ADM file is actually a multi‑channel WAV package that, when decoded by an Atmos‑compatible output device, is ‘intelligently’ rendered to the available speakers.

A Dolby Atmos ADM file is actually a multi‑channel WAV package that, when decoded by an Atmos‑compatible output device, is ‘intelligently’ rendered to the available speakers. Those speakers might be in a consumer Atmos home theatre system or a professional Atmos mix or mastering system. The beds are rendered using conventional panning, whereas the objects are rendered using the embedded positional metadata. In an Atmos mix or mastering studio environment, the Dolby Atmos Renderer application is not only able dynamically to render an Atmos mix coming in from the attached DAW, but it can also play out a previously rendered ADM package — and, essentially, that’s what the Fiedler Dolby Atmos Mastering Console does too. You load an ADM package into the Mastering Console, specify a sound output device, press Play, and the ADM plays over your Atmos monitoring or via a binaural re‑render.

The Mastering...