
Correct the placement of sounds in the bed channels and sound objects.Ensure that instruments don’t mask each other and sounds don’t clash.This correction and final touch is what Dolby Atmos mastering is. They need to be sure that the mix is done without mistakes, is ready for release, and will sound great. It happens quite often that musicians who create Dolby Atmos mixes don’t have a 3D speaker setup and use headphones for mixing, or aren’t experienced enough in working with this object-based format. If there is no mastering for music in Dolby Atmos, why is it still needed? Yes, Dolby Atmos mastering is popular, but it works as a final perfecting touch to the mix.

Why do artists need Dolby Atmos mastering? Mastering in Dolby Atmos is very much like mixing, during the process the engineer opens the same mixing session that the mixing engineer has created and works in it preparing the song for release. Moreover, for every playback system, from a 2-channel stereo file up to 9.1.4 speaker system a Dolby Atmos renderer makes a different mix, automatically applying the necessary limiting.

They are not united in one master bus in the master track, they remain individual. Standart mastering means adding plugins to the master bus, but there is no master bus in a Dolby Atmos renderer, it simply can not exist there, because the resulting audio track in Dolby Atmos consists of more than a hundred separate channels called audio objects. Technically, mastering as we know it for a stereo song, does not apply for a file in Dolby Atmos format, which is an ADM BWF file. What they mean is, they have a song that is already mixed in Dolby Atmos format, and this song needs to be prepared for release. Artists often ask us if we can do Dolby Atmos mastering.
