18 l July 2014
www.psneurope.com SOUNDBITES Studio UNITED KINGDOM
The Lisson Grove R-124 valve mono compressor will be made under licence in the UK by Unity Audio, it has been announced. The Essex-based distributor will take over production of the unit from US-based Lisson Grove, a company formed by Grammy Award-winning producer Hugo Nicolson. “I was approached by Hugo at the winter NAMM Show,” says Unity’s Kevin Walker, “as he was keen for Unity Audio to take over the manufacturing under a licensing arrangement. [He] ideally wanted to concentrate on design rather than manufacturing and […] we were keen to expand this side of the business further.”
www.unityaudioproducts.co.uk
Fineline Media Finance (star of May’s back page interview) has provided funding to MAMA Youth Project (MYP) to purchase two Avid Symphony edit suites as the charity upgrades its equipment to HD. MYP recruits and trains 48 disadvantaged young people aged between 16–25 each year in a range of production skills, including research, camerawork and sound operation. This was the first time MYP had used finance to purchase equipment.
www.fineline.co.uk
www.mamayouthproject.org.uk
Örebro University in Sweden has commissioned an API 1608 recording console in its “quest to prepare students for moving on to a modern recording studio”. Örebro, which has 17,000 students, will install the console in its school of music, theatre and art, which offers a course in recording music technology.
www.apiaudio.com
Jensen Transformers has announced its acquisition by long time customer Peter Janis, owner and president of Radial Engineering. According to Bill Whitlock, former owner and president: “Radial has been tied at the hip with Jensen since 1992, and has been the biggest user of Jensen transformers for years. It only made sense that [Janis] take the reins.” The Radial group also includes Reamp and Hafler.
www.radialeng.com
Dolby Atmos in post: Deluxe Soho tells all
Jon Chapple visits Deluxe Digital Cinema in London for a look at Dolby Atmos in the post-production environment
The fully Atmos-equipped theatre room at Deluxe
‘IMMERSIVE’ OR ‘3D sound’ in cinema – Dolby Atmos, Barco Auro 11.1, DTS MDA and their like – is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, with evermore theatres installing Atmos (or equivalent) rigs and no less than five Oscars won by films utilising the technology at the 2014 Academy Awards. So, with sound for cinema arguably moving into the ‘age of Atmos’, what does this mean for audio in post-production? Fresh from providing a “full range of mastering and distribution services” for the summer super hero blockbuster X-Men: Days of Future Past – a mammoth task that involved creating no less than 137 (!) unique digital cinema packages (DCPs) for distribution to cinemas around the globe – the ladies and gentlemen of Soho- based Deluxe Digital Cinema gave PSNEurope a behind-the- scenes look at Dolby Atmos in the post environment.
Deluxe’s speciality is the creation and distribution of said DCPs for both US (English) and worldwide foreign-language release. A DCP is a set of files of files that make up a cinema presentation, traditionally
for video and audio – containing the ‘beds’ and objects. Beds contain the audio that is not location-specific, such as atmospherics, while objects are given specific locations within the 3D soundscape. Deluxe says
audio), Andy Scade, director of digital cinema at Deluxe, assures us it’s negligible – which must be welcome news when the facility is increasingly moving away from sending physical hard drives to theatres towards “new electronic delivery options” like network and satellite delivery. We’re also told that each element of each DCP is encrypted, and recipient cinemas require a ‘key delivery message’ (KDM) to unencrypt each part of the media (image, audio and subtitle). For films with a Dolby Atmos track, an extra KDM is needed. According to Scade, Deluxe currently packages some 200 feature films a week – and the number of DCPs that include an Atmos audio component will only continue to increase rise as immersive sound technologies continue their relentless march into cinemas around the world. PSNEurope reported on the rise of Dolby Atmos and immersive audio, and its positive knock-on effect for cinema speaker manufacturers, in May’s issue. Commenting, Guy Hawley, senior director of cinema sales and services, EMEA, at Dolby Laboratories, tells us: “Since its début in April 2012, Dolby Atmos has been embraced by all the major Hollywood studios and award-winning sound mixers. The post-production community has responded really well – today, more than 40 digital
“The post-production community has responded really well – more than 40 mastering and duplication facilities and 55 sound mixing facilities are equipped to support Dolby Atmos”
Guy Hawley, Dolby Laboratories
comprising three distinct sources: video (high resolution image files, each a scan of a single frame of film), subtitles (both 2D and ‘dynamic’ 3D animated text) and audio (one 24-bit, 48kHz PCM standard channel-based audio). However, with an Atmos movie, there is a fourth element: an immersive audio MXF – an open-source container format
the Atmos system “generates the optimal soundtrack for the theatre […] and reproduces the objects on one or more of the channels closest to the location specified in the MXF”. On the subject of how much including a Dolby Atmos track in the DCP increases the file size (the Atmos sync track is on a separate channel to those used by the standard 5.1 or 7.1
cinema mastering and duplication facilities, and more than 55 sound mixing facilities, are equipped to support Dolby Atmos. “With more than 120 films from 12 different countries released or scheduled to be released in Dolby Atmos, we can only expect this momentum to continue.”
www.deluxedigital.co.uk www.dolby.com
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