Overview of surround and spatial audio in Logic Pro for Mac
Logic Pro for Mac offers extensive surround processing and mixing functions for all major surround formats, including spatial audio with Dolby Atmos.
Surround features are available when Enable Complete Features is selected in Logic Pro > Settings > Advanced.
In Logic Pro, you can create projects in three output formats:
Stereo: Routes the signals of all channel strips to a two-channel audio output signal. That signal is monitored with stereo speakers or stereo headphones and can be bounced to a stereo audio file.
Surround: Records and mixes a project in the surround format set in the Audio project settings. You monitor a surround mix on a dedicated surround speaker system or with standard headphones through binaural rendering using the Spatial Audio Monitoring plug-in. For more information, see Spatial Audio Monitoring in Logic Pro for Mac.
Spatial Audio (with Dolby Atmos): Creates a spatial audio mix in Logic Pro.
Recording and mixing in surround
All audio signals can be positionally mixed, allowing you to place them anywhere in the surround field. See Overview of the Logic Pro for Mac Surround Panner.
You can insert surround plug-ins into audio and instrument channel strips, which can be routed to surround auxes or outputs. A number of surround and multichannel effects and instruments are included. See Use surround effects in Logic Pro.
In a surround project in Logic Pro, incoming multichannel audio is recorded as interleaved multichannel files. Imported split multichannel files are converted automatically to interleaved multichannel files.
There are two plug-ins you can use on the surround master channel strip to check how your surround mix sounds in different formats:
Spatial Audio Monitoring plug-in: Lets you check your surround mix in the Apple spatial audio format over headphones using binaural rendering (with optional head tracking), and on built-in computer or display speakers that support spatial audio. For more information, see Spatial Audio Monitoring.
Note: To use the Spatial Audio Monitoring plug-in, you must have macOS Monterey 12.3 or later installed.
Down Mixer plug-in: Lets you hear your surround mix in stereo and other surround formats. It is not available for surround formats that use overhead channels. For more information, see Down Mixer in Logic Pro.
You can bounce multichannel projects as split and interleaved surround files. See Bounce surround audio files.
Logic Pro does not encode or decode surround files. You can use the Compressor app, available in the Mac App Store, to encode surround files.
To work with surround, you need an audio interface that has the number of output channels required by the chosen surround format. For example, the audio interface must have six outputs if you use the 5.1 surround format. You will also need the same number of speakers (and appropriate amplification) to hear the channels when mixing. See Overview of surround formats.
Mixing in spatial audio with Dolby Atmos
You can create spatial audio mixes for playback on systems and devices that support Dolby Atmos or for binaural playback using headphones. A Dolby Atmos mix consists of bed tracks and object tracks. You mix and route bed tracks just like normal surround tracks. You use the 3D Object Panner to position and move object tracks in 3D space. The automation information describing the position and movement for each object track is stored separately from the audio signal as metadata. See Create a Dolby Atmos project.
The Dolby Atmos plug-in on the surround master channel strip renders the audio and automation metadata for each object track plus the audio from the surround bed and lets you monitor it in various surround formats up to 7.1.4. In addition to mixing on a speaker system, you can also monitor your mix in different binaural formats with just a pair of headphones. See Dolby Atmos monitoring formats.
Logic Pro also supports Personalized Spatial Audio, which provides an even more precise immersive audio experience over headphones by using a customized head-and-ear-measurement profile that users can create on supported iPhones.
You can export your Dolby Atmos mix to an ADM BWF master file for delivery to streaming services.