Grammy-winning producer and engineer Dave Way was a little skeptical when he first heard about Dolby Atmos. It took Elton John to change his mind.
While at the 2019 NAMM Show in Anaheim, Way ventured by the PMC booth and heard a Dolby Atmos demo of the 1972 classic, Rocket Man, and was forever changed.
“I said, ‘wow, this is different’. It really gave me chills!” he recalls. “I knew this was a trip I needed to be on, and my mind started racing with possibilities for employing Atmos on different projects. I was with Michael Marquart of A Bad Think at the time, and we agreed that when we work on his next album, which ended up being the recent release LifeLike, we would create it from the very start with the knowledge that it would be mixed in Atmos.”
Way’s resume to date is impressive to say the least – he’s worked with everyone from Christina Aguilera to Paul McCartney, but it’s only in recent years that he made the switch over to immersive mixing.
His efforts have been well received: his most recent Grammy nomination was for Best Immersive Audio Album for his work as immersive audio co-producer on the 2019 album The Savior by A Bad Think.
Like many working in the world of immersive audio, Way’s attention inevitably turned to the Dolby Atmos format, and in 2020 he made the leap and upgraded his personal facility, Waystation Studio, to be able to mix in Atmos.
Since last year, he has been settling in with the new setup, mixing several projects and even recording an entire album specifically to be mixed in Atmos – helped in no small part by his arsenal of interfaces and a Focusrite Pro RedNet R1 controller.