Los Angeles, CA (April 8, 2022)—Studio construction specialist Kaiser Comm Construction has partnered with UK-based Smart Studio for Smart Studio USA, bringing the latter company’s modular studio system to the United States. The first installation was three Smart Studios for SIDE (Los Angeles), a provider of voice production, recording, editing, mixing, localization, and performance capture services for video games.
Smart Studio employs a modular design and off-site construction with the aim of reducing time and cost when creating acoustic environments. In the UK, Smart Studio has built more than a dozen modular studios for music recording, video game sound and entertainment post-production. “I thought it was a brilliant idea,” says Kevin Kaiser, head of Kaiser Comm. “Because the components of the studio are pre-manufactured, construction time is reduced by half and costs by half, or more—and yet, it’s a real studio, not a portable booth. Acoustically, it is as sound as a custom-built studio and suitable for all types of professional use.”
Developed by acoustician Jim Dunne, the system includes modular components for studio floors, ceilings and walls, which are manufactured offsite and incorporate materials to optimize sound insulation, room acoustics and more. Wall modules are loaded with ultra-high density Damped Membrane Insulation Panels (DMIPs), ranging in density from 1,600Kg/m3 to 2,400Kg/m3, while isolated floors, constructed on a series of ISO80 isolation pads, provide the base upon which the modular Smart Studio system is installed. Typical floor build-ups provide for isolation to 15 Hz.
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Meanwhile, ceilings are built off the wall modules and independent of existing structural elements. Using specially designed ISOiBeam, the Smart Studio ceiling reportedly provides for high levels of sound insulation plus a deep void/chamber for effective bass absorption to 63 Hz and below. Smart Studios can be built in sizes up to 570 square feet and in a range of configurations to suit individual spatial requirements and applications, including live rooms, control rooms, post-production mixing, music production and game audio. Acoustics can be adapted to support virtually any technical requirements, including Dolby Atmos sound production and mixing.
The three Smart Studios that Kaiser Comm Construction built for SIDE’s Los Angeles facility complement a trio of existing recording studios, custom built by Kaiser Comm Construction in 2015. SIDE’s senior vice president Audio & Speech Technology, Olivier Deslandes, noted, “Smart Studio allowed us to expand quickly and at a fraction of the cost of building studios from scratch. The Smart Studios took much less time to build than we expected and eliminated the need for an architect. It also allowed us to avoid the expensive and time-consuming process of securing building permits.”
