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METROPOLIS STUDIOS: A NEW IMMERSIVE OFFERING TPi’s Stew Hume pays a visit to Metropolis to get an exclusive tech tour of its new immersive audio studio and find out how innovations from the team at Sonosphere could spearhead change within the live events sector.
With immersive audio in higher demand than ever, from streamed events to in-person performances, there has been an overwhelming need for spaces in which engineers can work on mixes. Well aware of the demand for such a facility, Sonosphere, in conjunction with Metropolis Studios, has done just that – creating a state-of-the-art facility at the Chiswick Power House, London. With Sonosphere’s experience in immersive audio and livestreaming, the team were more than aware of the capabilities such a facility would need. Starting life as a room for podcasting and immersive content creation, the concept snowballed as Sonosphere realised they could create a space that could be utilised for a whole range of applications – from realtime immersive mixing of livestreams, to pre-programming an immersive mix before setting out on a live show. “In terms of the music market, Dolby Atmos is the standard. So, we decided to ‘have our cake and eat it’ and build a room to fully meet the
Atmos specifications,” stated Sonosphere Commercial Director, Jamie Gosney following the launch of the new space. Now open for business, the studio, which is Dolby certified and boasts an immersive monitoring environment capable of 11.1.8 Dolby Atmos, is currently the highest Dolby resolution studio in the country. Greeting TPi in this immersive audio wonderland was Sonosphere’s Senior Mix Engineer, Phil Wright and Metropolis’ Brand Director, Gavin Newman. “We explicitly wanted this room to be as versatile as possible in order to accommodate as many different workflows as possible,” began Wright. This need to be flexible is something that Wright believes is a necessity as the demand for immersive solutions increases. The studio can accommodate all possible formats and incoming mixing consoles and caters for several interface formats including MADI, Dante, AES3 and Ravenna. “Just the other day for a show we had a DiGiCo brought in and we were up and running with it in no time at all,” enthused Wright. 18
