Nashville, TN (October 4, 2023)—Nashville’s Starstruck Studios has opted for an ATC 7.1.4 setup to pair with the SSL System T S-500 console in the recording facility’s Dolby Atmos room.
Starstruck Entertainment, the parent company of Starstruck Studios, was founded in 1988 by Narvel Blackstock. Over the last 25 years, Starstruck has developed and managed numerous acts including Blake Shelton, Carly Pearce, Maggie Rose and Emily Ann Roberts, and has recorded artists such as Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan and Taylor Swift in its studios. Noted recording engineers such as multiple Grammy-award winner Chuck Ainlay frequent the facility.
Starstruck opened its Dolby Atmos room in the spring of 2021; Nashville-based acoustician, Michael Cronin, Michael Cronin Acoustic Construction, re-worked Starstruck’s existing lounge and listening room into a Dolby immersive sound studio, and suggested the ATC Dolby Atmos system would work in the new workspace. Once Narvel Blackstock and the Starstruck staff engineers concurred with Cronin’s recommendation, the ATC system purchase was made through Westlake Pro Audio in Nashville.
Inside ‘Mix Nashville: Immersive Music Production’
Shawn Daugherty, Starstruck’s chief technical engineer, installed, calibrated and integrated the immersive system room. The ATC 7.1.4 system is composed of three ATC SCM110As handling left-center-right, four ATC SCM45As for surrounds, four ATC SCM25As for heights, and two ATC SCM0.1/15 subwoofers.
Noted Daugherty, “Accuracy, placement and performance are strategic in meeting the specifications of a Dolby Atmos system. The ATC system was strikingly easy to calibrate. In fact, when the Dolby engineers came out for the final tuning, they literally could copy and paste settings from one speaker to another. The ATC’s detailed tonal balance and exact reproduction makes it hard to imagine working in a studio that doesn’t have them.”
One of the first recording engineers to use the Dolby Atmos room was Derek Bason, who was mixing tracks from Carrie Underwood’s catalog into Dolby Atmos.
