Broadly generally known as what he jokingly calls “the Atmos Remix King,” with practically 40 characteristic movie remixes underneath his belt, Doug Mountain restores Hollywood historical past in Dolby Atmos utilizing NUGEN Audio plug-ins.
Doug Mountain has labored on acclaimed sequence like “Group”, “The Strolling Lifeless” and “All American”, and served as a consulting engineer for the GRAMMY Awards for over 25 years. At present, he’s broadly generally known as what he jokingly calls “the Atmos Remix King,” with practically 40 characteristic movie remixes underneath his belt.
Most not too long ago working from his customized Dolby Atmos combine room, Mountain has change into a key determine in remixing many studios’ historic movie libraries for immersive sound codecs, together with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Imaginative and prescient. On the coronary heart of his workflow is a collection of NUGEN Audio plug-ins, together with Halo Upmix, which he credit as important to faithfully modernizing the beloved movies, as these instruments allow seamless restoration of legacy soundtracks.
“Halo Upmix is the cornerstone of what I do,” he says “It’s instrumental, particularly for music upmixing and backgrounds. It offers a fuller, smoother sounding upmix in comparison with a variety of different comparable instruments on the market.”
Mountain usually works with restricted supply materials, corresponding to mono dialogue, remoted music and results stems or legacy 5.1 mixes. His objective is to breathe new life into these components with out compromising their historic integrity. “A variety of mixes from the ‘90s have robust entrance and rear components, however we’re lacking the center of the room,” he says. “Halo Upmix helps fill that house and makes the soundstage really feel full. It tells me what’s lacking and helps construct it up naturally.”
Mountain’s previous initiatives, together with “Tornado,” “Enter the Dragon” and “Excessive Society,” have all benefitted from this meticulous remixing course of. A more moderen spotlight is the re-release of “Purple Rain,” which was screened in Dolby Atmos for one night time solely at choose AMC theaters throughout the U.S. For Mountain, the emotional expertise of that movie was paramount, which is the place Halo Upmix shined. “If you wrap the music across the viewers utilizing Halo Upmix, you intensify the emotional expertise,” he explains. “It doesn’t simply come from all audio system — it envelops you in a means that feels pure and highly effective.”
The undertaking was extra than simply an enhancement. Mountain and his crew needed to observe strict pointers to make sure they remained devoted to the unique audio expertise. “We don’t should reinvent the wheel or change into a revisionist,” he says. “Our job is to revive the soundtrack to how individuals keep in mind it, which is commonly higher than it initially was.” To attain detailed evaluation and guarantee compliance, Mountain relied on NUGEN’s Halo Imaginative and prescient and LM-Right plug-ins.
“These instruments are indispensable when repurposing content material for various platforms,” says Mountain. “As soon as we clear up and rework the audio, every market has completely different loudness specs, and NUGEN helps us meet these requirements with out compromising high quality. The plug-ins are intuitive and steady, and so they sound nice and work throughout codecs. You’ll be able to even fold a combination right down to stereo with out phasing points, which is big.”
Mountain’s enthusiasm for NUGEN goes past the plug-ins themselves. “The options are straightforward to entry and set up, however the firm can be tremendous approachable, which I admire,” he notes.
As studios look to monetize legacy content material and ship new experiences to followers, professionals like Mountain are redefining what’s doable with the correct instruments in hand. “We’re not simply restoring — we’re elevating,” he concludes. “NUGEN Audio is a giant a part of that.”
