Taking advantage of the UK lockdown, game developer Sumo Digital has expanded its audio facilities by building three 5.1 surround sound edit suites, a Dolby Atmos mix room and a Foley/ADR space at its Sheffield premises. All of the new facilities are equipped with PMC monitoring, chosen for the clarity and precision Sumo Digital’s audio designers require to source, edit and create sound effects and conduct interim and final mixes.

The three edit rooms now feature PMC Twotwo.6 monitors for LCR channels, Twotwo.5 surround monitors and a Sub2 for the LFE channel. The new mix room, which is built to Dolby’s Atmos standard, has PMC IB1S monitors for the LCR channels, Wafer2 monitors for the surrounds, Wafer 1 for the height channels and two Sub2s for LFE.

‘We conducted blind tests with PMC and two other well-established monitor brands and it was very hard to ignore PMC’s value at the price point we were looking for,’ says Sumo Digital Audio Director Pat Phelan. ‘We like the fact that the PMC’s remove any mystique from the sound that you are hearing, the sound feels surgically exposed. In a dynamic game environment where you have little control over what a player will do, being able to monitor and mix with confidence is a massive boost.’

Part of Sumo Group plc, Sumo Digital is a world-class game developer with studios in Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, Leamington Spa, Warrington, The Chinese Room in Brighton, Red Kite Games in Leeds, and Lab42 in Leamington Spa. Outside the UK, the company also has facilities in Pune, India. Sumo develops games across all platforms and genres and is recognised for its proprietary technology and creativity. Its portfolio of games feature titles for major publishers including Microsoft, Sega and Sony and, since its formation 17 years ago, it has worked on many major franchises such as Sonic The Hedgehog, LittleBigPlanet, Forza, Hitman and Dr Who.

Sumo Digital has audio facilities at four of its UK sites but, with an increasing workload, the directors felt it was time to invest in facilities in Sheffield. Studio and technical design consultancy White Mark Ltd was resppnsible for designing the new studios, with the build and fit out handled by principal contractor Confetti Media Group under the direction of Joe Duckhouse and Greg Marshall.

‘The main mix room was designed to Dolby Atmos for home theatre specifications with particular attention paid particular to the workflow in audio for games,’ explains Duckhouse. ‘By using a mixture of PMC IB1S and wafer monitors in this room, White Mark was able to come up with a very sleek design that maximised all available space.’

‘As most of our games can be played back on a variety of systems, we usually create switchable (in game) mixes for stereo, headphones, 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos,’ Phelan adds. ‘As audio professionals, the majority of our team’s day-to-day involves the use of headphones, especially when we need to work in close proximity to the wider development team. Already we are beginning to see the new studios helping make enormous improvements to our workflow. The other very important element is having a calibrated and trusted monitoring systems that we can make our mix decisions on. We are extremely happy with how all our studios sound.’

Completing a design and build project of this magnitude during a global pandemic is a major achievement for everyone involved, especially Joe Duckhouse’s wife who had to live with a spare room full of studio monitors that were rushed over from the PMC factory before it went into lockdown.

Sumo Digital is currently working on multiple projects including own-IP game Hood: Outlaws and Legends (2021), alongside unannounced titles for some of the world’s larggest games publishers. Sumo’s most recent releases include Hotshot Racing (Sept 2020), and two original IP titles exclusive to Apple Arcade: Spyder (2020) and Little Orpheus (2020, The Chinese Room).