Metropolis Studios launched its brand-new, state-of-the-art 3D audio mixing facility at the heart of our West London complex in July 2021.
The new Dolby certified studio enables established and emerging artists to unlock the exciting potential of 3D audio. The control room pursues a flexible ‘hub studio’ approach with a bespoke designed console which can be moved anywhere in the room allowing for multiple use including all mixing desk based workflows. The mix room is also connected to both Studios A and B enabling us to record and broadcast live in immersive formats.
With the loudspeakers arrayed at 30° of separation, the audio monitoring in the new studio is designed to cater for all surround formats, including Dolby Atmos and 360RA. Our studio has the highest Dolby resolution in the UK at 11.1.8 with 11 loudspeakers in the horizontal 360’ plane, 8 height loudspeakers from front to rear and a sub array.
In the short time we have been open, our in-house team of engineers have been lucky enough to mix an incredible array of artists in Atmos and 360RA including Major Lazer, Kali, The Amazons, Koven, Jack Savoretti, St.Vincent, Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, Disclosure, Little Simz, Alvaro Soler, Yonaka, Billy Marten, Don Broco, Cautious Clay, Milton Nascimento, Bonobo, Anne-Marie, Metronomy, George Ezra, Bastille, Chase & Status and many more.
Coinciding with launch, Metropolis also agreed a content deal with Amazon Music who will use the studio as its UK-based HQ for spatial mixing and we are delighted that they have chosen Metropolis to represent them and demonstrates both of our commitment to providing outstanding high quality audio to music fans.
We have set up a little Metropolis Studios Atmos / HD playlist on Amazon Music so you can sample some of the above content. You’ll need to have the App downloaded to your phone or computer in order to play music in 3D. In terms of listening, any Atmos enabled device will playback in 3D according to your specific set up. And everybody can access and playback 3D content on any decent set of headphones, you will receive the binaural render which we emphasise, is extremely high quality audio and mixed by the team at Metropolis for that specific listening experience.
For those that don’t know, Dolby Atmos is an immersive audio format which uses object-based rather than channel-based delivery enabling the same master to scale to the number of speakers in any system, whether that’s a simple two-channel stereo, a 5.1 channel surround, a fully immersive 7.1.4 (or more!) surround system or a binaural representation on headphones. With Dolby Atmos, the artist is able to place each object in a precise 3-dimensional location, which will be rendered in real time during playback to the appropriate speaker in whatever system is available. In case you’re wondering, the third digit in our bespoke 11.1.8 Dolby Atmos array refers to the number of height speakers.
