Montreal’s Le Lab Mastering has added a Atmos room, bringing Atmos mastering to its offerings on top of fully analogue stereo, vinyl mastering and lacquer cutting.

The 7.1.4 Atmos studio features a Focal monitor configuration using Trio11, Trio6, Solo6 and Sub6 speakers – dual Sub6 subwoofers are stacked under the left and right Trio11 monitors to support mastering for movie soundtracks and other formats that need extended low-end. It also provides symmetrical low-frequency coverage in a smaller footprint. Trio6 monitors fill out the centre and rear channels, while Solo6 are on the sides.

Le Lab also has a stereo mastering room based around Focal Grand Utopia hi-fi monitors and Utopia EM subwoofers, ‘On the stereo mastering side, engineers have almost always been using consumer speakers because they’re the bridge between the professional studios and homes,’ says studio owner and senior mastering engineer Marc Theriault. ‘I always liked the sound of Focal because they’re very natural sounding and that’s what I’m looking for.’

Theriault recalls his interest in Atmos for music as soon as it was announced, and starting plann a room. ‘I was kind of the black sheep in Atmos because there were not many Focal rooms at that time,’ he says. ‘I’m not using Pro Tools, I’m using Nuendo. I’m not using a Mac, I’m using Windows on a custom computer. I’m not using Dante, I’m using Ravenna. I was in my own world and had to figure it out.

‘At the beginning, there were all kinds of compatibility issues,’ he continues. ‘I spent a lot of time working on this – I made contact with Dolby, Apple, Merging and Focal to build my Atmos mastering studio. Also, I saw that there were no tools for my set-up, so I built some specifically for mastering to help me do my work. I spent many hours building a monitor controller dedicated to immersive audio wirelessly controlled from an iPad.’

Although the Atmos mastering room at Le Lab wasn’t built with ‘legacy’ records in mind, the studio has mastered Atmos versions of many records on the Sony label, including all of Celine Dion’s albums after they were re-mixed for the format from the original multitracks. The studio has also mastered Sia and Whitney Houston’s albums, which were also re-mixed for Atmos. ‘I work with my partner, mixing and recording engineer Francois Lalonde,’ Theriault says. ‘We start from the multitracks and we remix everything. First, we try to match what was done for the original mix, and then we make it immersive.’

During the mix and mastering process Theriault often checks the audio using headphones, including his Focal Utopia, ‘I always keep a pair next to me in the studio. I first heard the Utopia headphones in France when they came out and I was really impressed.

‘I was interested in Atmos, I felt like when it really starts, it will mostly be consumers with headphones who experiment with immersive sound. I was pretty at ease with headphones because I used headphones on tour for many years and I’ve been measuring headphones and experimenting with headphones for a long time, and I own a lot of headphones. I’ve possessed a Neumann KU-100 binaural head for nearly 20 years too.’

Theriault has been able to customise many of the technical aspects of his stereo and Atmos rooms including calibrating the sound in the room. He developed a calibration system that corrects amplitude, phase, and time domain distortion, as well as fully bass-management the 7.1.4 set-up. Because he has custom control of mixes through his iPad, he creates precise masters whether in Atmos or stereo.

‘At the beginning, if you wanted to listen to an Atmos mix over headphones, you had to make an mp4, put the mp4 in your iPhone, and then listen with headphones. To do an A/B comparison for mastering and to hear the difference between the original and what my processing sounds like my system needed to be in real-time whatever the format, and nothing existed at that time. So that’s why I created my custom program controlled by an iPad custom control interface, and it has paid off, it’s very efficient and useful.’

In addition to his work as a mastering engineer, Theriault is an audio researcher, focusing on the science of sound and how it can be optimised for the best listening experience. He has researched digital audio processing and the development of immersive sound, particularly in the areas of 3D audio and binaural audio. As a member of AES, he has been involved in various committees and initiatives aimed at promoting excellence in audio engineering.