Established in 1994, Dallas Audio Post (DAP) has become one of the most prominent postproduction facilities not found on one of America’s coasts. At the helm from the start, owner and chief engineer Roy Machado today staffs the largest and most experienced audio team in the region. The facility’s recent uptake of Dolby Atmos represents the latest advancement to date for DAP.

‘It has long been clear that we’re moving beyond 5.1 as a delivery format,’ explains Machado. ‘We decided to make the move to immersive on our main mixing stage.’

With numerous formats in play, Machado and team chose Dolby Atmos for its scalability and its ubiquity in the TV and film industry. The system DAP has installed is an augmentation of the Meyer Sound 7.1 system that has been in use since 2012, and is capable of supporting a variety of other immersive formats as well.

‘The first step in the process was contacting Meyer Sound’s Miles Rogers and Ashley Hanson alongside DAP’s architect, Francis Manzella of FM Design. In collaboration, DAP produced drawings and a proposal to present to Dolby that would allow DAP to be commissioned for both theatrical and home theatre Atmos mixing on its main stage.

The redesign of the stage was intensive, and required the removal of fabric walls to expose the underlying frame and sound treatment, then the relocation of all of the speaker boxes. Additional height speakers were also hung from trusses that suspend beneath the acoustic tiling in the ceiling, all this while keeping the speakers out of the path of the projector. The specifics of the process were all spelled out in the proposal sent to Dolby.

After its review, Dolby decision-makers suggested an additional modification to the upper soffit, to allow a fourth row of height speakers behind the mix position. ‘That suggestion was spot on,’ Machado says.

The final loudspeaker array on the main stage now consists of three screen channels (LCR), 12 surround speakers, eight height speakers, two surround subs and four LFE subs, all from Meyer Sound. The design of the system turned out to be as intensive as the construction of the room. At the heart of the new system is the Avid MTRX for I/O and the DAD SPQ speaker processing card for speaker control.

With everything installed and passing signal, it was time for Dolby and Meyer Sound to pay DAP a visit for the commissioning. During a five-day stretch, Rogers from Meyer Sound and Bryan Pennington from Dolby Labs tested, tweaked and calibrated the new system using an array of mic combinations and proprietary software. They then created and stored calibration profiles to be used for a wide variety of formats, including Dolby Theatrical Atmos, Dolby Home Theater Atmos, 7.1, 5.1 and stereo.

Even so, Rogers and Pennington felt that the subwoofers could use more headroom so they played back a mixes that had maxed out the LFE and found that the subs were working a little too hard to reproduce those sounds. On their recommendation, two additional Meyer X800 C subwoofers were installed, bringing the total to four subwoofers to power the low end. All calibrations were updated, and DAP’s new room was ready for business.

‘DAP is perfectly positioned for today’s postproduction market,’ Rogers reports. ‘With the ability to instantly switch from 5.1, 7.1, Atmos HE and Atmos Theatrical, there are very few facilities in this league. The fact that they have all of this, and are not located on a coast, brings a world-class, postproduction facility to all within arm’s reach.’

‘It was a long journey to get here, but the additional capability and flexibility will serve us and our clients for a long time to come,’ Machado adds. ‘I can tell you this for certain, producers are really going to love this room.’