Question Dolby Atmos for home theatre - FMOD & Unity

Hi there,

I’d like to ask the community about outputting Dolby Atmos to a home theatre system from a game built in Unity.

So far I have set everything up in FMOD and Windows - FMOD is outputting 7.1.2 to my AVR. This is all working fine.

FMOD and Unity seem to be connected correctly, as the 7.1.2 Atmos bed is playing in Unity BUT Unity only outputs L, R and LFE (channels 1, 2 and 4) instead of all 12 Atmos channels.

My AVR says it is receiving Dolby Atmos but it clearly isn’t.

I’m fairly confident I have FMOD and Windows set up correctly, but feel I am missing some settings in Unity. Or some build settings in FMOD? A missing Unity plugin maybe?

I haven’t found anything in the Unity documentation about enabling Atmos.

Cheers,

Tom

 

short answer - have you checked the output format of Unity in the Project Settings under Edit > Project Settings > Audio? there is a possibility that the Atmos bed is just encoded in standard 7.1 audio (or might be compatible with it) which is supported in Unity.

as far as Atmos specific documentation in Unity, you very likely won't anything, pretty much because Unity doesn't really care much about audio at all. it does support surround files but that's because the underlying older FMOD Ex audio engine at the heart of Unity already supported it. however, spatial objects on a linear encoded file like Atmos are definitely not supported.

as far as i'm able to determine, middleware like FMOD and Wwise support Atmos For Games, which is a different beast than an encoded Atmos file bounced from a DAW. if you're using FMOD Studio and using Unity, i would install the FMOD Unity integration, because there is absolutely ZERO support for Atmos files directly in Unity at all, or in fact any type of spatialization via Ambisonic files - but Ambisonic support can be installed using decoding support in other tools like Oculus Audio, Steam Audio and Resonance (which i believe is what FMOD Studio uses to spatialize audio),

all this being said though, though i know the interactive version of Atmos is represented by binaural rendering in middleware packages like FMOD Studio, i'm definitely not sure if that extends to supporting Atmos beds. you might find the answer over on Michael Wagner's YouTube channel. he's done some setting up of Atmos For Games on FMOD Studio and Wwise. but i have done some research and so far i do not see compatibility as yet between linear Atmos in a DAW and Atmos For Games. i'm quite happy to be proven wrong though.

hope this helps,
scott