Dolby Atmos for headphones not allowing objects

Question

Hello. I'm investigating the new device management, 3D audio and all. It's so good and working very straight forward, doing what it says it does. 

I'm confused with Dolby Atmos for headphones though. When enabled, it does show the end system is now 7.1.4 and the game audio to main mix is using all the channels nicely including the Highs etc.. Great.. But It does not take any of my object routed sounds and falls back to converting them in the main mix. 

I'm surprised because when using default, Windows Sonic or DTS headphone X, everything works, I see the end point also being 7.1.4 and sound to main mix peaking there, BUT I also do see my objects to object master bus sending objects to the end point (via the object meter). 

Is this a current known bug? Is there a setup to do in Windows to make sure the Dolby Atmos for headphones is showing Wwise that it's ready to receive the minimum x number of objects? 

Thx

Answer 1

It sounds like your Audio Device's "Minimum System Audio Objects Required" property is set higher than 16.

Dolby Atmos for Headphones can only handle a very limited number of dynamic objects concurrently. See the table on Microsoft's documentation page under "Microsoft Spatial Sound Runtime Resource Implications": https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/coreaudio/spatial-sound

IIRC, in Wwise by default the value for "Minimum System Audio Objects Required" is 32. This will let objects through for any 3D audio backend supporting *at least* 32 concurrent objects. With other backends, like Dolby Atmos for Headphones, the objects will get mixed to the Main Mix.

You can choose to lower the value of this property below 16 to send objects to Dolby Atmos for Headphones. However, you must be careful to never play more than 16 3D object sounds concurrently, otherwise some sounds will be mixed and others not, which may sound jarring to the user. If you exceed the limit of the backend, you will see warnings pop up in the Capture Log when profiling with the Wwise Profiler.

Hope this helps,

Philippe Milot

Comments

Thank you! It really makes sense. I believe it could be better explained in the base documentation, since Dobly Atmos for headphones feels like a third party and the default settings will not allow objects.

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Thank you ! I have this working now.