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Ableton Live Exercise 1 - Setting up a Set in Ableton Live and the Dolby Atmos Renderer 

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Exercise Objectives: 

This exercise is designed to reinforce concepts covered in the first 6 modules of the training. The objective is to set up communication between Ableton Live and the Dolby Atmos Renderer, verify the connection, and create a new session in Live.  

Download the Ableton_ExerciseContent.zip to the Ableton workstation and unzip on the media drive. This zip file contains 3 Live sets (95BPM, 146BPM, and Loudness) as well as stems, MIDI files, and an Ableton template. These files will be used throughout the exercises and called out when needed.

 

Dolby Atmos Renderer: 

  • Launch the Renderer 
    • If you see any errors or alerts (such as Audio driver error), click OK to dismiss, we will address these in setup.  
  • Open the Preferences pane by navigating to Dolby Atmos Renderer > Preferences or entering Command+ 
  • Set up the Driver tab: 
    • Set the Audio driver to Core Audio 
    • Set the Audio input device to Dolby Audio Bridge 
    • Set the Audio output device to your preferred output device 
    • External sync source will be set to LTC over audio
    • Set LTC input channel to 129 
    • Set Frame rate to 24 fps 
    • Set Sample rate to 48 kHz 

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  • Click Accept to save changes 
  • Open the Input Configuration pane by navigating to Window > Input Configuration or entering Command+I 
    • Verify that the Input Configuration is set to default. If necessary, click Use default and accept changes.  
  • Set the Source Input/Master toggle to Input 
  • Enable the Synchronization button 
  • Verify that nothing is dimmed, muted, or attenuated in the master section 

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Ableton Live: 

  • Launch Live 
  • Open the Preferences pane by navigating to Live > Preferences or entering Command+, 
  • In the Audio tab: 
    • Set the Driver Type to CoreAudio 
    • Set the Audio Input Device to your preferred input device 
    • Set the Audio Output Device to Dolby Audio Bridge 
    • Open the Output Config Pane 
      • Enable Mono Outputs 129&130 and Stereo Outputs 1-128. Note that this will only need to be done once and these settings will persist across sessions.

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      • Click OK 
  • Set the In/Out Sample Rate to 48000 
  • Set the Buffer Size to 1024 

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  • In the Plug-Ins tab: 
    • Verify that ‘Use VST3 Plug-In System Folders’ is set to On 

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  • Close the Preferences Pane 

For the purposes of this exercise, you can choose to create a Live Set manually or use the template included in the exercise content (Dolby Atmos Music Template.als). For the purposes of exercises 2 & 3, option 2 (the supplied template) will be used.  

Note that because Live does not have a native immersive panner, an all-Object workflow will be used. Due to this, outputs 1-10 (which are reserved for bed audio) will not be used and the first object in the session will start at output 11. For a more detailed explanation refer to Module 5.8.  

 

Option 1 – Create a Set manually: 

  • Delete any pre-made return tracks (the default Live Set contains two return tracks – Reverb and Delay) 

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  • Delete any pre-made audio or MIDI Tracks (the default Live Set contains two of each) 
    • Note that Ableton Live requires there to be at least 1 audio or MIDI track at all times, so you will only be able to delete 3 tracks. You can delete the pre-made tracks after creating your own in the next step 
  • Create 13 audio tracks by navigating to Create > Insert Audio Track or entering Command+T 
    • There are 13 audio tracks in the 95BPM exercise content. You can make more or less than 13, and create additional tracks as needed. 
  • For each track: 
    • Navigate to the Plug-Ins Browser 
    • Navigate to VST 3 
    • Navigate to Dolby Laboratories 

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  • Drag and drop the Dolby Atmos Music Panner on the track 
  • In the Dolby Atmos Music Panner: 
    • Ensure that the Dolby Atmos Music Panner is connected to the Renderer by typing localhost (or the IP address of an external Renderer).  
    • The connection light will be green 

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    • Assign the panner to the lowest available object pair. For the first panner this will be 11 and 12 
  • On the selected track: 
  • Set Audio To to Ext. Out 
  • Set the output channels to match the object pair assigned in the music panner 
  • Rename the track to match the output (in this case Object 11-12) 
    • Right click the track > Rename 

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  • Repeat for all remaining tracks 
  • Create a Track for the Dolby LTC Generator plug-in 
    • Create a new audio track 
    • Set Audio To to Ext. Out 
    • Set the output to 129 
  • In the browser, navigate to Plug-Ins > VST3 > Dolby Laboratories > Dolby LTC Generator 
  • Drag-and-drop the Dolby LTC Generator onto the track 
    • Set the Frame rate to 24 fps (or the Frame rate of the project – note that this must match the Renderer) 
    • The Start time must be set to 00:00:00:00
  • Press play and navigate to the Renderer to verify LTC sync 
    • As the play head in Live moves forward, the time display in the Renderer should chase 

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  • If the Renderer is not chasing timecode, verify the following: 
  • In the Renderer: 
    • In the main window 
      • Synchronization is enabled 
    • In Preferences 
      • External Sync Source is set to LTC over Audio 
      • LTC Input Channel is set to 129 
      • Frame Rate is set to 24 
  • In Live: 
    • The play head is moving in the arrangement (horizontal) view 
    • The Audio Output Device is set to Dolby Audio Bridge 
    • The output of the LTC track is set to Ext. Out – 129 
    • The Dolby LTC Generator plug-in is set up correctly 
  • Save the Live Set 
    • Navigate to File > Save Live Set As. 
    • Pick a name and location

 

Option 2 – Create a Set using the supplied template  

  • Open the template provided in the exercise content (Dolby Atmos Music Template.als) in one of 3 ways:  
    • Navigate to File > Open Live Set or enter Command+O 
      • Select the template file in the browser and click Open 

or 

    • Double click the Dolby Atmos Music Template.als file from a finder window  

or 

    • Drag and drop the template file from a finder window to an open Ableton Live window 
  • Verify the settings in the Dolby LTC Generator plug-in 
  • Press play and navigate to the Renderer to verify LTC sync 
    • As the play head in Live moves forward, the time display in the Renderer should chase 

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  • If the Renderer is not chasing timecode, verify the following: 
  • In the Renderer: 
    • In the main window 
      • Synchronization is enabled 
    • In Preferences 
      • External Sync Source is set to LTC over Audio 
      • LTC Input Channel is set to 129 
      • Frame Rate is set to 24 
  • In Live:
    • The play head is moving in the arrangement (horizontal) view 
    • The Audio Output Device is set to Dolby Audio Bridge 
    • The output of the LTC track is set to Ext. Out – 129 
    • The Dolby LTC Generator plug-in is set up correctly 
  • Save the Live Set 
    • Navigate to File > Save Live Set As. 
    • Pick a name and location 

Once option 1 or 2 has been completed we will send test noise via an Object to verify audio and metadata communication between the Live and the Renderer. For the purposes of this test we will use the first object (object 11-12) and a noise generator, as well as the Dolby Atmos Music Panner plug-in on that track.  

 

Ableton Live: 

  • In the Browser sidebar: 
    • Navigate to Audio Effects > Delay & Loop > Echo 

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  • Drag and drop the echo plug-in onto Object 11-12 
    • Verify that the echo plug-in is before (to the left of) the Dolby Atmos Music Panner in the signal chain 

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  • In the echo plug-in 
    • Navigate to the Character tab 
    • Check the box labeled ‘Noise’ 
    • Click and drag the ‘Amount’ value up to 100% 

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  • Click the wrench icon of the Dolby Atmos Music Panner to open the plug-in window 
    • The object color should be green 

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  • Navigate to the renderer to verify that the object position and audio signal is present 

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  • In the Dolby Atmos Music Panner, create a short sequence: 
    • (For more information on using the Music Panner and sequencer, refer to module 5.8) 
    • Enable the Sequencer toggle 
    • Click edit 
    • Draw a shape in the panner window 
      • Experiment with different shape tools 
  • Click Done 
  • Set the step duration to 4  

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  • Push play in Live to start the sequence 
  • Navigate to the Renderer to view the Objects 
  • If the objects are not visible or there is no audio, verify that you have correctly set up Live and the Renderer as per the beginning of the exercise 
    • If all settings are correct and there is no audio passing from the Live to the Renderer, you may need to enable microphone permission for the Dolby Atmos Renderer. See this article.  

 

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