A showpiece of Victorian architecture originally built to house the London Tram System, The Power House in Chiswick, West London, has been home to the Metropolis complex since opening 35 years ago.
The building never saw use in its intended purpose, and sat derelict for 80 years, before being restored and its five floors becominng four recording studios five Mastering Rooms, numerous writing, production and mixing rooms, and a bar. It has now added a fifth studio, a certified Dolby Atmos system based around Neumann monitors.
Counting Queen, Eric Clapton, Elton John, George Michael, Amy Winehouse and Stormzy among its many guests, Metropolis has consistently nurtured an atmosphere of creativity and collaboration
‘We’re committed to being the most relevant and diverse studio in the UK,’ says Metropolis Brand Director, Gavin Newman. ‘I think the fact that two thirds of all domestic Brits nominations in 2021 use the studio and that we’ve become a go-to venue for brand partnerships with the likes of Clash magazine, Nordoff Robbins, London Fields Brewery, Ellesse, Mastercard, Record Store Day, Amazon Music, Notion Magazine, Fred Perry, Harman, Clarks, Shure, Jack Daniels and WaterAid says a lot.’
Metropolis’ aim to remain technically up to date has most recently led to its new immersive studio. Developed in conjunction with immersive audio and live streaming specialist Sonosphere, versatility was the key for the Munro Acoustics-designed room. Its centrally located mix position and immersive monitoring environment ensures it can cater for all current surround formats. The room fully meets Dolby Atmos specifications, is capable of delivering 11.8.1 Atmos and includes a Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite server.
While Metropolis has not traditionally been a Neumann house, the Sonosphere team has a long history with the brand and was keen to demonstrate its benefits. A key mission was to ensure clean and extended low frequency, with the required isolation to accurately judge tone-shaping a full octave below the effective range of many monitoring systems.
As a result, three Neumann KH 420 tri-amplified monitors are soffit-mounted to the front wall, with one KH 420 positioned horizontally beneath its video screen and twin Neumann KH 870 400 W subwoofers flanking the three-way monitors, with deep bass response up to 18Hz. Surround monitoring is handled by 17 Neumann KH 120 compact bi-amplified studio monitors, renowned for uniformity between units, and with a ± 1.0dB linearity deviation between 100Hz–10kHz.
‘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,’ explains Sonosphere mix engineer, Phil Wright, who was a key member of the design team. ‘Atmos is more “front-centric”, so for that format 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 new studio adds an immersive dimension to Metropolis’ comprehensive suite of recording studios and mastering rooms. While the facility is already well known for music, there are a host of 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,’ concludes Sonosphere Director, Jamie Gosney. ‘Choosing Neumann was a no-brainer for us as they produce some of the very best professional studio monitors in the world. We are proud to be able to collaborate with the team at Metropolis on building this top-notch immersive facility, and we cannot wait to see all the creative opportunities that the new studio will bring to their new and existing clients.’
