Sienna Sphere

Name: Sienna Sphere
Author: Acustica Audio

by Acustica Audio · Utility · Binaural immersive monitoring

Not rated yet

Sienna Sphere is an Acustica Audio plugin for monitoring immersive mixes on headphones, using binaural processing and emulations of Dolby Atmos studios.

It supports speaker layouts from 2.0 to 9.1.6; the price is not shown on the product page.

Best for: Mix Bus, Mastering, Sound Design. Genres: Ambient & Cinematic, Electronic & EDM, Pop.

Keywords: hardware emulation, full mix, reference & monitoring, wide, bus processing, cinematic, mastering, mix bus, mixing, sound design, spacious, utility.

What it does

Sienna Sphere takes Acustica's Sienna headphone-monitoring approach into surround and immersive formats. It renders a multichannel mix binaurally, so you can hear a Dolby Atmos-style speaker setup on ordinary headphones; the developer describes it as a "binaural listening experience" for surround work.

Binaural rendering: converts speaker layouts into a 3D headphone signal, with several render modes, including Dolby Near, Mid and Far plus Apple Logic and Steinberg Nuendo-style binaural options (per Production Expert).
79 speaker layouts: sampled arrangements from 2.0 and 5.1 through 5.1.2, 5.1.4, 7.1.2, 7.1.4, 7.1.6, 9.1.4 and 9.1.6, with up to 16 input channels.
Atmos room emulations: eight sampled rooms from three certified Dolby Atmos studios: HOG Studios, Experimental Studio and Officina 5.1.
Headphone correction: correction for around 200 popular over-ear and in-ear models, also useful for checking how a mix sounds on different headphones.
Sienna rooms: compatible with the room emulations from existing Sienna volumes.
System Wide: a free Sienna Sphere System Wide version.
Playback, not authoring: it monitors a finished channel layout; you still need a DAW that supports Atmos and a renderer (Logic Pro and Nuendo have one built in).

It launched in late 2021 with an introductory price. The product page does not show the current version.

Source: Acustica Audio product page

When to use it

Sienna Sphere is about hearing an immersive mix when no speaker array is available, unlike most rated utilities here, such as Insight 2, REFERENCE 3 and Metric AB, which are for measuring and comparing stereo mixes. Its closest rivals are other binaural monitors such as dearVR Monitor, NovoNotes 3DX and the Dolby Atmos Renderer's own headphone output. Production Expert found it more fully featured than dearVR Monitor, with more render modes and headphone models, but heavier on CPU. Unlike the original Sienna, which corrects stereo headphone listening, Sphere is built for layouts up to 9.1.6. Pick it if you want to check Atmos mixes and their binaural renders on headphones without booking a room.

Best for: checking Dolby Atmos and other immersive mixes on headphones, and QC of binaural renders.
Genres: film and TV post, plus cinematic, electronic and pop music mixed in immersive formats.
Look elsewhere if: you need head tracking or light CPU use (dearVR Monitor is lighter), or you only mix in stereo, where the original Sienna is enough.
Tip: use one instance on the monitoring output rather than several in a session, since Production Expert found it too CPU-heavy for multiple instances.

What producers say

Reviewers see it as one of the most complete binaural monitoring tools, held back mainly by CPU load and a few missing features.

Production Expert praised its "fine controls of all parameters", its many binaural render modes and Dolby speaker formats, and its use for QC without the Dolby Atmos Renderer, saying it gets "close enough" to production reference monitoring.
Criticisms: Production Expert found it "a bit too CPU heavy for multiple instances", noted no head tracking and no input soloing, and found the mix of room simulation and binaural processing confusing.
Gearnews framed it as part of a shift where anyone can mix spatial audio with standard headphones, while stressing that knowledge of immersive mixing is still needed.

Where to buy

Acustica Audio: see store

Tutorials and reviews

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