Los Angeles, CA (December 15, 2022)—Ross Lara has what might be the highest altitude Atmos-capable studio in the world after relocating his Archipelago Entertainment to Breckenridge, Colorado, which is 9,000 feet above sea level.
After Lara and partner and business manager Brian Shenefelt built Archipelago Entertainment for music production, film scoring, game audio, audio branding and content development, they moved the company and its studio to Colorado — where Lara grew up part-time — from previous quarters in Atlanta and L.A. The eight-year-old audio-production company was also ready to adopt Dolby’s Atmos, which it achieved using components from Focusrite’s RedNet and Red series of networked audio converters and interfaces.
“Focusrite came on our radars when we were researching getting into Atmos,” says Lara, who has produced, composed, and mixed music for high-concept projects including Mythforce (coming out on Epic Games next year), award-winning short films and international chart-topping artists. “Focusrite also collaborated with us, helping us choose the right components and helping us through the inevitable hiccups of getting started in a complex new format.”
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If a computer is the heart of any digital audio facility, Lara describes the Red 8Pre as “the lungs of the studio,” the device through which every bit of audio passes. “The converters are fantastic,” he says, “and the RedNet R1 controller allows us to route and synchronize multiple sources simultaneously, which really creates efficiencies in the studio. It’s an amazing controller. We’re still doing most of our work in stereo but as we move further into immersive, its capabilities will become even more important and useful.”
The RedNet D16R MkII is a 16-channel bi-directional AES3 interface that can work with either Dante or AES audio formats—options that Lara says were crucial in their decision making. “I prefer to use AES for reliability reasons, and once we had the RedNet D16R in place, any format headaches went away instantly,” he says, noting that it has communications compatibility with the Trinnov D-Mon 12 monitoring controller and room-correction system the studio uses for its 7.1.4 Output Frontier and Genelec subwoofer speaker array.
Additionally, Lara says he loves having the ISA One classic Focusrite microphone preamp with its independent DI channel and optional 192kHz precision A-D conversion available. “I’m using it for analog synths and some microphone recording applications,” he says. “It’s portable, so it can go where I go, and it’s especially great for augmenting the low end on some recordings, down around 50 to 60 Hz.
