Symphony Studio & Immersive / Atmos speaker names, abbreviations and channel order conventions.

For those who are new to Immersive audio, this will clarify a few things and serve as a reference.

Naming conventions for speakers in Surround, Immersive, and Atmos systems can vary significantly. As you move beyond a 5.1 configuration, the standard assignments for speaker channels begin to diverge. There is no universally accepted standard or single method for naming speakers. You may encounter different channel orders, such as L, C, R or L, R, C. Ultimately, the naming conventions depend on the general practices adopted by different sectors, including cinema, music, and home theater.

What we settled on is very close to what AVID and Dolby's Atmos channel names are, but more importantly, we use the AVID / Dolby Atmos channel order for mixing immersive music. 

• 7.1.4 in Pro Tools

• 7.1.4 Channel Order

• 9.1.6 in Pro Tools

• 9.1.6 Channel order

What the Apogee abbreviations mean.

When you create a new Monitor Workflow the first thing you do is define the layout from the dropdown...

...and the corresponding channel abbreviations and channel order are filled in automatically.

If you enter an abbreviation manually, it turns BLUE IF you use any of the abbreviations shown above. You can name speakers whatever you want and they will appear in white.

The blue "preset" abbreviations are mostly for maintaining sanity, but with one important exception - The LFE MUST be called LFE or Bass Management will not work. This is because under the hood there is routing and crossover filtering of audio below the specified crossover frequency on all of the (non LFE) channels. The default is 80Hz. The audio that is filtered out of your main speakers is then redirected to your Sub Woofer.

For more information on Bass Management see page 27 of the Symphony Studio User Guide