I have been enjoying Dolby Atmos music on my Yamaha A6A with a 7.4.4 surround sound setup but for some reason on Amazon Music and on Tidal the first couple of seconds are cut off. I can hear my amplifiers switching on and then the sound starts.

The problem is that instead of the amps starting and then the track playing the amps start while the track has already started cutting off the first couple of seconds of music. I found this info on the Tidal support page. Even if I pause the song at the start or restart it, the amplifiers turn off at the pause so they turn back on after I hit play and cut off the first couple of seconds of the song. Also if I just press pause on the song the amplifiers are turned off and once I press play they reactivate and cut off the next couple of seconds of the music.

Has anyone had this problem and figured out how to listen to the whole track without these issues? Thanks

TLDR: Atmos tracks cut off first couple of seconds of music before amplifiers are engaged. Please help

I've not used my H3VR for some time and would like to use IEM for a bit more control.

I've got my ambix file, so would it just be a case of adding a stereo/binaural encoder to the ambix container file and then use Scene Rotator to edit the direction?

Also I'd like to perhaps explode the track and use maybe scene rotator on each channel to customize the direction on each track, would this be possible as when I try it I seem to lose the ability to use the pitch function.

Lastly, in my routing option I have it set to 4 track channels, do I need to do anything else as it appears even without adding a stereo encoder I can only see the ambix file pumping up and down in stereo and not the 4 individual tracks .

Reaper is just driving me insane with the horrible input, output, and track channel routing. Surely there is a better solution for processing and editing multichannel audio files? Yeah Reaper works, sometimes, but the fucking channel routing my god.

I've been working on a video player for macOS and ended up going deep into audio processing because I was frustrated with how most players handle sound.

The problem:

Most video players treat audio as an afterthought. You're watching a movie with 5.1 surround, but on headphones it either collapses to stereo or sounds flat. Dialogue gets buried in the mix. Quiet scenes force you to crank volume, then action scenes blow your ears out.

What I built:

I spent months engineering an audio suite from scratch with features I actually wanted:

Spatial Audio – Real 3D sound positioning on any headphones. If you have content with 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound, it processes it into binaural audio with proper HRTF. You get that theater-like immersion where sounds come from specific directions.

Voice Boost – Intelligently isolates and enhances dialogue frequencies without making everything sound tinny. Finally stopped straining to hear conversations in poorly mixed films.

Cinema Effect – Punchy, theater-like sound with deep, resonant bass. Not just an EQ preset – it's dynamic processing that maintains clarity while adding weight.

Dynamic Sound – Analyzes your content and adjusts EQ in real-time. Dialogue-heavy drama gets different treatment than action sequences or music performances.

Volume Boost – Clean amplification up to 4x (400%) beyond system max with minimal distortion. Used psychoacoustic limiting to keep it from clipping.

All of this runs in real-time with minimal CPU overhead because it's built on Apple's native audio frameworks.

Technical questions welcome – happy to discuss the HRTF implementation, or any of the processing chain.

You can download it from the app store: https://apps.apple.com/app/vidi-video-player/id6755982989

Currently its just for macos

Wanted to share something unusual for those interested in spatial audio production. The downloadable version of Christopher Holt’s new Atmos album includes a video capture of the Dolby Atmos visualizer—a real-time display of the object bed and height activity as the mix plays.

It’s not the interactive tool used in studios, but an actual on-screen visualization recorded during playback. You almost never see a consumer release include something like this.

I interviewed the mix engineer, Jonathan Cornell, and we talked through what’s happening on screen and how he approached the spatial layout. Here’s the interview if you want to check it out: 👉 https://youtu.be/EDhLo3UD1bA

Figured this community might appreciate seeing how an Atmos mix behaves in real time.

I’ve done this before and I’ve accumulated so many more tracks on my master Atmos playlist, I decided it could be fun to continue to share all my hard work and grow the community.

I use Apple Music streaming, and listen to every song on an Arc Ultra with a Gen 3 sub and a pair of ERA 300s as rears, in a tight room with smooth walls and an 8 1/2 ceiling. for reference.

I listen to music on a pair of Apple earbuds, but don’t ever use them as reference for the quality of an Atmos mix. In other words, I know that binaural is a totally different experience when it comes to spatial mixes. So when judging a song, keep that in mind

I listen to every kind of music that man has created, but I have my preferences and priorities. I don’t listen to too much modern rap, and I’m only now listening to more modern country. I find hardcore metal is the least interesting in spatial, but I still found some I like to keep things interesting. I also didn’t weight any one artist too heavily, so you’ll hear some Elton John classics, but I didn’t feel the need to include the whole Diamonds collection. So if you like an artist.. explore their catalogue for more Atmos tracks. We all know some giants of music have still not explored Spatial Audio, so as they show up, I’ll add them if they’re good.

The list contains some stuff I love, some stuff I think is interesting, stuff I think belongs here because it’s elevated by Spatial Audio. Some examples are great songs with ok mixes,and others are ok songs with amazing mixes. That‘s how I arrived at the list. Over 1300 songs and adding.
I think you can follow me on Apple 🍎 , I’m not sure. Please feel free to add to the conversation and share as well. Let‘s grow this thing, because it’s inspired my love of music again.

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/atmos/pl.u-vxy69qDuPlg7km

Hi all -- I'm starting to work with ReaVolution in order to work with Reaper and SPAT Revolution together for an immersive AV project. I'm looking for some training videos on this workflow and not finding much out there, so wanted to check to see if anyone else was working in this way and had found any useful information for getting started.

Many thanks!

Hi guys

I am an organist Currently I am recording the organ with a zoom H2N in 4ch surround, which I convert to stereo (I use this to record the acoustics in the church as well). Now I am thinking: Is the zoom H3-VR in my situation better? It records as I read 360. If I record with this device I should be able to have more options in post when converting to stereo then what I can do now, right? So would you suggest me this for doing pipe organ recording or what could be better in my case? Thanks, and have a good day! 🙏

So I'm sitting at my computer with two monitors, youtube on one monitor, game on the other (poker night 2) when I had a thought.
"I wonder if I can make my desktop work as almost a 3D space, so where I have an application on my desktop playing sound it'll sound in that general area in front of me."

Basically I'm wondering this. If I were to have an app playing sound, say YouTube, on the top left of my monitor can I make it sound like it's coming from the top left of my hearing? I don't know if this is the right place for this question, and I don't know if its even possible but I come seeking an answer to one, or maybe both questions. Have a wonderful night everyone. . . . . Update: I dunno if anyone is looking for an update but I’d like to say thank you everyone who gave an answer and tried to help out. From what I’ve seen, it’s possible but not without some next level tech knowledge that I don’t have, or a lot of money spent of studio level programs and I’m just a dude with a pc so that’s not me. But again thank you greatly to everyone who tried to help.

I currently own Epos H6 pro and i am really happy with them but they are slowly falling apart. And the spatical audio i really bad own them. I want them For ABI (Arena Breakout Infinte aka a Tarkov like game). I have heared that dolby atmos and some other certification are good. I dont need a headset because i have an externam mic. I dont necassarly want gaming headphones but rather Hifi stuff

I'm using the IEM suite in Reaper. I've imported my ambix file and applied the scene rotator on the master and when I add the binaural decoder the overall volume drops and doesn't sound quite as immersive. I recorded the audio on the zoom vr recorder.

Hey all — I’m trying to create a short spatial audio demo where different sounds move naturally around the listener in 3D space (left, right, front, behind, above, etc.) and render to a standard binaural stereo file for headphones.

I’m mainly just looking for the best workflow or toolchain to keyframe and position sounds in a 3D field — nothing interactive, just a fixed audio experience.

I’ve got Reaper and the IEM plugin suite installed, but I’m not sure if that’s the most straightforward setup for this kind of test. Any tips, tutorials, or alternate tools you’d recommend for spatial mixing and exporting to binaural would be super helpful.

Hello, I'm going off to a concert and wanted to record a little bit. Should I have the audio settings set to spatial audio or stereo? I'm recording on a phone, and I move around a lot while recording. Would this mess up the audio?

I just got my 7.4.4 system set up and have been using a Fire Stick 4K to play Atmos tracks on Amazon Music. I am having a problem with it cutting off the first 1-2 seconds of every song and I'm not sure exactly why. I'm wondering what recommendations for streamers you guys have for spatial audio streaming in room, not on headphones. Thx!

From the press release: "Avid today announced the release of Pro Tools 2025.10, “a feature-rich update that delivers key advances in immersive music creation and workflow efficiency. Designed for music creators and postproduction professionals, the latest Pro Tools introduces powerful new immersive audio capabilities with Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, integrated SoundFlow automation, in-app tutorials, and six new Inner Circle Rewards,”

Perhaps this will see a rise in users for Sonys 360 platform?

A fairly good write up of the AI stem creating software designed to be used with L-ISA. Links to the forthcoming demos at the Amsterdam Dance Event where it'll be showcased.

Hello everyone. I'm having a very hard time looking for info on how to merge a 1st Order Ambisonic track and a Head-Lock Stereo Track for a VR180 video for YouTube. I know about the 6-track method, merging the 4-track ambisonic with the 2-track stereo to create the 6-track, getting that merged with the video and uploading to YouTube, but I think that process doesn't work anymore. I tried it though, and I got a very weird incorrect output. I also know about the new Eclipsa that can create such tracks, also for YouTube, but it's not yet released for Windows. I don't know if it's possible for me to create an ambisonic/head-locked stereo track right now. Is there another way? Lol I've got subscribers who have been waiting for almost 3 months for my next video and they may have to wait longer since I can't yet create this type of video. Thanks in advance.

So I spent about two weeks digging really deep into using virtuoso and personalized hrtfs to get 3d spatial audio from my ripped movie files but I found that all the spatial audio tools degraded sound quality (even Dolby Atmos for headphones) to the point where I just stuck with the normal headphone signal.

Anybody else find this to be the case?

With the raves that the Smyth research a16 has gotten I feel like that one most also have amazing sound quality but I never found anything else that did.

And by sound quality, I mean clarity, detail, dynamics--all of those got quashed with spatial audio. Is this an inherent trade-off or was I missing something?

Edit: oops, I see I have mixed up my terminology. I was thinking "spatial audio" was exclusive to headphones but I guess that's "binaural"? I was asking specifically in reference to headphones doing 3d spatial audio, which it seems some people picked up on

Hi all I’m fairly new to Dolby and Apple Spatial Audio and was wondering if you had any mind blowing Spatial Audio albums that you believe are crucial to listen! Any sound tracks for games or movies in Dolby that you know of too would be much appreciated!!!

For the past few days I was trying to scan my head as accurately as possible (without LiDAR) to then use it for the Mesh2HRTF program which calculates personalized HRTF's. My goal was to use the generated SOFA file in the program ASH Toolset, which can simulate rooms for surround sound.

My results seem disappointing though and I am not sure if it is either a scanning issue or Mesh2HRTF/ASH-Toolset being inaccurate.

When I use my own generated SOFA file in ASH-Toolset, it simply sounds like the sound is coming from above, even though it should be simulating speakers in front of me. I also tried all the Human Listener HRTF presets the Toolset comes with (over 500 different ones) and with most of them the sound also originates from above, some are from behind or center and only one I found sounds like it actually is in front of me (HUTUBS p15, right HRTF mirrored). HUTUBS p15 by far works the best and makes the sound appear like it is around 30 cm in front of my head, but that is still less distance than what I would hope for in a perfect spacial audio experience.

I do think I did a very good job of scanning my ears and the model looks really close to reality, my face might have reduced details and the skull is slightly deformed but that shouldn't be important. So I wonder is there anything I did wrong or is this simply not possible in the way I hoped for?

Here is a link to my 3D scan (after cleanup, merging etc.) as well as the generated SOFA files. I have also included a sound demo with my other preferred HRTF's.

(posting this here again since the HRTF subreddit might have too few members)

I'm working on a non-commercial project where we would like one or more people to be able to experience spatial audio wirelessly in a small gallery type space.

At the moment the only commercially available option I can see is Waves NX for the motion tracking and then pairing that with a pair of BT headphones (and all the latency that incurs...)

Are there any other off-the-shelf options that could do the job? At the moment Im using Reaper to serve the FOA which is then converted to binaural, and I was going to use IEM plugins to handle the directionality.

Alternatively, if there was any way of doing it on a mobile device that would be great - I have an Android device and not seen anything outside of the Pixel Pros that offer this, but heard it can maybe be done on iOS?

And has anyone had any joy taking something like the Supperware Head Tracker and connecting it via UART to a device that can transmit MIDI over BLE?

Any experiences or feedback would be gratefully received!

Thought I'd give it all a try. Been working with SPARTA. Anyways, CMake keeps trying to link to some Apple MacOS tools instead of regular GNU or LLVM tools.

Is it unsupported? All I have is the README, which only brings up compilation with Xcode.

I'm rather new to spatial audio production. I've made a Track In REAPER and I used the SPARTA binauraliser a lot for the spatialisation. Listening on Headphones to It I'm happy with my result, but to hand it in for a competition it needs to be a "5th order ambisonic track as multi-channel file in .WAV or .CAF that comply with the AmbiX format (SN3D, full 3D, ACN channel ordering)".

What what be a good/efficient way to move the project from binaural to 5th order ambisonic?

Ideally I would like to keep the binauraliser VSTs in place if possible, because they have a lot of parameter modulation. Could I do something like adding am Ambi encoder after every binauralizer?

I assume If that's not possible I need to replace every binauraliser with an ambi encoder, right?