Designed by supports and Dolby certified, a new studio has been opened at the Power House in Chiswick, London, by immersive audio and live streaming specialist Sonosphere and Metropolis Studios. The centrally located control room mix position follows a flexible ‘hub studio’ approach to mixing, and its comprehensive immersive audio monitoring is designed to accommodate all surround formats.
‘The plan was to make the studio as versatile as possible’, says Sonosphere Commercial Director, Jamie Gosney. ‘We started out looking at building a room for podcasting and immersive content creation for games and other VR simulations. However, in terms of the music market, Dolby Atmos is very much the standard. So we decided to have our cake and eat it, and build a room to fully meet the Atmos specifications – an immersive monitoring environment capable of 11.1.8 Dolby Atmos, currently the highest Dolby resolution studio in the country.’
The room is equipped for all possible formats, including having a Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite server. Three Neumann KH 420 tri-amplified monitors are soffit-mounted to the front wall (with one KH 420 horizontal, beneath the video screen). Twin Neumann KH 870 subwoofers flank the three-way monitors, with low frequency response down to 18Hz.
Key to the objectives is clean and extended low frequency performance from the twin subwoofers, with isolation permitting use a full octave below the effective range of many monitoring systems. Part of the mix room construction involved nearly two tons of sand to isolate the rear wall, which adjoins another studio at Metropolis. Surround monitoring is handled by 17 Neumann KH 120 compact bi-amplified studio monitors, noted for their consistence between units, with a ±1.0dB linearity deviation between 100Hz–10kHz.
With credits including Paul McCartney, the RPO, Brian May, Benny Andersson and the English National Ballet, as well as broadcast mixes for Children in Need and Comic Relief 2020 and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Phil Wright is an important member of the studio team.
‘The whole point of Atmos is that it is loudspeaker system agnostic,’ he explains. ‘You mix one master file, called a Dolby Atmos Master File (DAMF), which is used to deliver the content to the end-user and then the end-user’s equipment plays a version of the content suitable for the equipment attached. You might have a completely discreet 7.1.4 cinema system – or a soundbar – the Atmos file can be decoded to best reflect the gear you own.’
Wright explains that the design philosophy enables mix work not only for Dolby Atmos, but for any immersive format: ‘We decided on three loudspeakers across the back wall, with all the loudspeakers around the room arrayed at 30° of separation to each other, so the set-up was completely symmetrical for doing third-order [high-order Ambisonic] work. Atmos is more “front-centric”, so one of the rear loudspeakers will not be in use, and two of the others will be electronically adjusted for Dolby using a DAD AX32 monitor controller. The AX32 enables any number of virtual room presets to be optimised for different immersive formats.’
Part of the hub studio approach includes freedom from dependence on any particular mix hardware. ‘Jamie has designed this beautiful DAW workstation that’s on a 3m umbilical to the wall, so for a DAW-based workflow, you can sit with Pro Tools, Logic, Reaper or the client’s DAW of choice in the sweet spot in the centre of the room,’ Wright says. ‘When we have a “live” job, or a client whose preferred workflow is a mixer, then we take the locks off and wheel the DAW to the side of the room at 90° to the engineer.
‘One of the other reasons we decided not to put a permanent console in is because there’s been quite a bit of interest from theatre designers – who would bring their own desk in,’ he adds. ‘When we were designing the room, we consulted with live sound engineers, concert system and theatres designers, who, normally, have not been able to set up or programme their immersive systems until they are in a rehearsal rooms or a venue. As a result, we’ve focused on creating benchmark acoustics, with a central listening position served by 22 loudspeakers.
‘This means that any designer of almost any show can set up in the room and programme their show on our system. They can work in-the-box, or on any digital console for theatre, broadcast, studio tracking, mixing or postproduction project.’
HHB Communications provided components for the studio, including the DAD AX32 that provided 32 analogue outs to feed the lousspeakers. As well as 128 channels of Dante and Pro Mon licence with SPQ processing card for speaker EQ, Delay, and distributed Bass Management processing. The DAD MOM provides tactile user control of the system. Additionally, a Dolby HE-RMU (Home Entertainment Rendering and Mastering Unit) was installed, as well as HHB consulting on technology options and assisting with studio commissioning.
‘This was a fantastic project to be involved in,’ says HHB Communications CTO, John Johnson. ‘With such high-resolution of monitoring, and with the many use cases for the studio, flexibility and ease of use were of paramount importance, we therefore recommended the combination of DAD products for audio routing, tactile monitoring control and high-fidelity D/A converters. Once installed and commissioned the studio sounded fantastic and we set about delivering bespoke Dolby Atmos training so the team at Sonosphere could hit the ground running.’
The studio adds an immersive dimension to Metropolis’ complement of four recording and five mastering rooms. The facility is already well known for music, with two thirds of 2021’s domestic Brit Award winners having recorded there. There are many opportunities in the pipeline for the new studio, with streaming and delivery options provided by the Sonosphere team.
‘There is already a significant order book for the room in terms of record labels, who want well-known catalogue content remixed in Atmos so they can add it to HD streaming services,’ Gosney closes. ‘We are also in talks with a number of live venues, production companies and promoters as the studio can be very easily attached, via fibre, to virtually any venue in the country and used as a live broadcast and streaming hub – thus eliminating the need for production companies to park large OB vehicles outside their venues. We also have the ability to handle soundtracks and postproduction for the film industry. The possibilities are truly endless.’
