Zwaag, The Netherlands (June 17, 2016)—Last year, London’s Factory Studios became the first U.K. facility to include a Dolby Atmos-licensed suite for commercials and trailers, which features 35 Alcons CRMS Cinema Reference Monitor System speakers.
“We aim to be at the forefront of developments in audio technology,” says Factory sound engineer Ben Firth. Founded in 1997, the award-winning facility has produced the sound for projects by many high-profile clients, including EE, O2, Renault, Nike, Three, eBay, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Harvey Nichols, BT, Sony and Samsung.
“We have a close relationship with Dolby and are always interested in new formats. We were introduced to Atmos at an early stage and, with an increasing volume of work, have been able to build two new sound studios, one with dedicated 9.1 surround and Atmos monitoring,” says Firth.
Laurence Claydon, founder of technology consultancy Cinefilm, was brought in to work with White Mark acoustic consultants on the project. “The critical thing for an Atmos array is to get the loudspeaker positioning very accurate and to ensure each one has enough power and dynamic range for each position,” he says. “With horn-loaded compression drivers, distortion rises with frequency above the break-up point at 3 kHz. Alcons pro-ribbon loudspeakers do not suffer with break-up or increased distortion at higher frequencies, so are clean beyond the upper limit of human hearing at 20 kHz.”
For the surround system 20 CCS-3s, four VR8s and four CRS8s were chosen. The low end is handled by four ultra-slim CB181 subs, with ten Sentinel 3 amplifiers driving the system.
Alcons Audio
www.alconsaudio.com
