Genelec chosen for Beijing’s latest Dolby Atmos HE studio

China:

The new mix room at Beijing San Gui Media International has gained Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment Studio certification with a 7.1.4 Genelec SAM studio monitor setup.

Established in 2009 and located in a two-storey building in the Beijing Dongfeng (East Wind) Art Zone, San Gui is a film and video production company handling video editing, sound postproduction and colour correction. The new Dolby Atmos HE room is one of three mix rooms, and the facility also offers six further audio mix/edit suites, five video editing rooms and a colour mixing studio. The 7.1.4 certified room, one of the three mixing rooms, has been installed with three Genelec 1032Cs as the front L-C-R system, four 8340As as side surrounds and a further four 8340As as top surrounds. Two Genelec 7370A subwoofers provide the sub-bass channel.

“Since 2018, the video platform we’ve been working with for a long time has been telling us they want to try the Dolby Atmos format for a few of their series,” said Yi Maomao, one of the chief sound technicians at the facility, who believes that Dolby Atmos is the future of film and video sound creation. “We have been watching market trends and are following them.”

The acoustic design and renovation of the 40m² room was handled by Xu Tie, with system integration implemented by DMT Beijing. The goal was simple: to gain Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment Studio Certification and meet the requirements of film pre-mixing. However, the construction process was not so easy, the biggest challenge being the insufficient height of the room, which couldn’t meet Dolby’s requirements. The only solution was to remove the first-floor ceiling and rebuild it, vastly increasing the cost of the project. “We thought of giving up, actually,” confided Yi. “We know it would have been easy not to go ahead with the certification but pass it off as a Dolby Atmos studio, but this is not the way we work; we always want high standards and good quality.” A decision was finally taken to remove the ceiling.

With many years’ experience, Yi and his colleague, Zhou Guang, have used a range of monitor brands. “From a creation point of view, I think Genelec’s sound is detailed and true; I can hear what I need to,” said Zhou, who has used Genelec since the days of mono recording. “Many TV programmes used to be recorded in mono, and if you wanted to reproduce complex audio scenes, the only way was to work on the frequencies. This was very demanding of the skill and experience of the audio professional. From stereo to 5.1 surround systems and Dolby Atmos, there is now a much bigger space in which to create, and the richness and realism of the sound would have once been unimaginable. Our team does not survive by taking ‘quick’ jobs, and our long-term partner also has a high demand for quality and detail. We believe that this insistence on high-quality work rather than a quick turnaround is the way to progress.”

Agreeing with this sentiment, Yi added: “We really believe those who have a requirement for quality will choose to work with us.”