Toronto, Canada (February 10, 2026)—Juno Award–winning artist, engineer and producer Justin Gray, who recently won the Grammy Award for Best Immersive Audio Album, has taken delivery of an Immersive Design Labs microphone array. Gray, who will appear at Mix Music Production LA in March discussing how he created the Grammy-winning album, is the first Canadian to win a Grammy in the Immersive Sound category.
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The IDL 7.0.4 recording array is an 11-microphone system, with seven microphones dedicated to capturing the horizontal soundfield and four positioned above to reproduce height information for immersive formats such as Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 RA. Its layout and intent closely mirror techniques that
The IDL setup enables him to capture sound at the source exactly as he envisions it, he explains. “Based on my experience as a spatial remixer, when we try to take something recorded for stereo and stretch it around a space, we’re already fighting a battle. Sometimes it works, and sometimes I just wish I could go back to the source and capture the sound and its relationship to the space around it.”
Using the IDL array, “It makes it much easier for engineers to capture immersive recordings natively at the source. The microphones are beautifully calibrated, sound great and the setup comes together fast and precisely. As a producer and engineer, it got me to making music faster and made the technology more invisible to the artists. In the end, what matters most is the music.”
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Gray has created immersive mixes for the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Snoop Dogg and The Tragically Hip. His Grammy-winning album, Immersed, was conceived, recorded and mixed for the format, placing the listener at the center of a 360-degree orchestra.
