Los Angeles, CA (August 29, 2023)—Todd Hooge, owner of Sonic Forest Studios in British Columbia, is all-in on Dolby Atmos, building a facility that relies heavily on a Dante network.
Hooge put his studio together with the assistance of Dolby engineers, who helped him with acoustical advice and technology selections right down to the Adam Audio speakers that create his 7.1.4 monitoring matrix. That’s hardly surprising since Hooge was predicating the new mix facility—opened in January 2021 and located in his home on five lush acres near Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada—on the continued momentum of the immersive Dolby Atmos format in cinema, gaming, music and other media genres.
“Investing in Atmos is no small thing,” Hooge says, citing both equipment costs and the renovations to his home the studio required. “Before I did it, I wanted to make sure that was the way the market is trending. I didn’t just read the pro-audio magazines but also the financial papers and magazines. I wanted to be absolutely sure this was the way to go, the thing to do; like any major life decision, I wanted to do my homework.”
Hooge’s Focusrite equipment complement includes a Focusrite Red 16Line 64-In / 64-Out Thunderbolt 3 and Avid Pro Tools | HD compatible audio interface. “It is the main interface for the entire rig, and the hub for all the Atmos,” he explains. “After I decided I wanted to go with Dante connectivity for the whole studio, I saw that the 16Line was perfect, because all of the Focusrite gear units can also talk to each other over Dante. It’s my digital patch bay and through it I can reach any other device in all seven recording-enabled rooms of the house.”
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Three RedNet HD32R 32-channel HD Dante network bridges support the immersive system’s 128 objects. “I work in Pro Tools HDX 2, and without the HD32R, I would have fewer channels. I wanted to max the system from the start,” Hooge says. A RedNet 5 Pro Tools HD bridge provides access to his older Pro Tools rig.
“I can’t do without it,” Hooge says of his RedNet R1 desktop remote monitor controller. “I have a Yamaha RX-A8A Atmos receiver and with the R1, I can instantly switch to it to capture immersive audio, such as Apple Spatial sound, in the wild. Also, the R1 has power over Ethernet, so it doesn’t need external power.”
He can place his pair of RedNet X2P 2×2 Dante audio interfaces anywhere there is a CAT 6 jack. “I can use it as a headphone mixing device, put a singer in one of the rooms and record remotely, because it has two mic pre’s on it.” He also relies on three RedNet AM2 stereo audio monitoring units.
A RedNet PCIeR card provides bi-directional Dante audio connectivity with the studio’s computers with full network redundancy. “I’m running two fully-loaded Mac Minis—got some of the last of the Intel stock, which I was happy about—and they can talk to each other in perfect sync through the card,” Hooge says. “It keeps the rendering process moving along without a hitch.”
The studio’s 7.1.4 immersive configuration is made up of 11 ADAM Audio S3H active studio monitors and a Genelec 7370A Smart Active Studio subwoofer. A team of Dolby technicians helped spec the room and recommended the Adam monitors for their headroom and low end.
