John Loose knows how crucial his role as engineer is in the movie-watching experience. In the latest episode of Behind the Board, the director of audio/visual production for Dolby Labs dissected how spatial audio is changing cinema sound, how engineers use little moments to create musical magic, approaching modern mix elements and more.
Starting by tracing his music roots to his dads career as a clarinetist and pianist, Loose became a concert percussionist and pianist before becoming an engineer. Now, at Dolby Labs, Loose spends most of his time working on Dolby Atmos, a spatial audio technology that has become the standard for film release. Atmos takes cinema sound beyond the limitations of simply panning between speakers, instead creating audio objects that can be tracked around the room and rendered to the room on playback.
"{Dolby Atoms] was really designed so that we could get over this need, in the cinema industry espeiciall, to get a higher resolution, meaning more speakers, more channels, without making the Hollywood mixers do a special mix for every single configuration," Loose explained
Loose also dives into how the, "Little moments that we all choose as engineers to pull out of a mix and to draw your attention to," can be made bigger with Atmos without losing the original intention of the mix. He cites Beach Boys' Brian Wilson's early mono mixes as examples of how certain moments rise to the top and relates the technique to approaching modern mix elements such as loops.
Learn more about Loose's work at Dolby by watching the video above, and stay tuned for more episodes of Behind The Board.
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