Know Your Lows

We ALL know what a subwoofer is, right? It’s that fun box with the big speaker that (probably) sits on your floor, pumping out all the low-frequency “feels.”

But when working in immersive, and more specifically Dolby Atmos, it’s necessary for us to join our post-production (and film/TV music) colleagues in understanding what—for us on the stereo music side—is a new tool in our mixing arsenal: the Low Frequency Effects (LFE).

It might seem like a simple concept, but understanding what it’s for, how it works and how to implement LFE in your mix can initially be confusing. So, let’s start by untangling some of our notions about subwoofers and the signals that feed them.

The fine print: To save confusion, the term “2.0” will be used throughout this article to refer to standard 2-channel stereo. The term “binaural” refers to the 2-channel fold-down of an immersive mix.