Vying for a prominent place in Mumbai’s notoriously competitive postproduction market, Aurom Post Sound has furthered its commitment to immersive audio with the commissioning of a second 7.1.4 room equipped with Genelec Smart Active Monitors.
‘With customers impressed with the kind of performance we were getting from our first immersive studio, we decided to upgrade our original 5.1 room to a 7.1.4 configuration,’ explains Aurom owner, sound designer and mix engineer, Akhilesh Acharya. ‘That would mean we would have two rooms with Genelec 7.1.4 monitoring that can both offer multi-format postproduction.’
The project saw Genelec’s Indian distribution partner, Sound Team, work closely with acoustic consultant Ajay Kumar PB and the local team from Dolby to ensure that the room would offer the translation between the studio and the movie theatre that Aurom required, as well as meeting Dolby’s exacting standards in a challenging space. The facility’s first Atmos studio used 8240A monitors and a 7270A subwoofer for the 7.1.4 configuration, but due to the size of the second room a different solution was found for the new space.
‘We all know as mixing engineers that if you want to get the right sound and translation, Genelec is the only option available,’ says Acharya. ‘In the new room we are using 8340As as LCR, with 8330As for surrounds and overheads plus a 7370A subwoofer and 9301A Multichannel AES/EBU interface,’ he adds. ‘These monitors were suggested by both Dolby and Sound Team in accordance with the room size, so that we can work on both theatre mixes and OTT platforms. We are absolutely happy with our monitoring chain.’
With the solution designed, installation was smooth, taking five days from cabling to commissioning. One of the reasons for this was Genelec’s GLMcalibration software.
‘We were impressed with the way GLM’s Auto Calibration works, and gets you very accurate results,’ Acharya reports. ‘The ability to then manually tweak after the AutoCal stage really gives a lot of flexibility to the person calibrating the room. We have also made different setups in GLM so that we can switch at any time between presets for a 5.1 film mix, theatrical Atmos, OTT Atmos and stereo too.’
Reflecting on the overall project, Acharya is satisfied with the choices that Aurom has made: ‘For a mix room, everything is results orientated,’ he reasons. ‘It’s all about translation. We have not lost a single client in the past five years. The main reason is, they have heard more or less the same mix in the theatres or at home. Customers are happy and we have been getting regular work. We have found a high-performance product with very good reliability, and we are extremely happy with our purchase of Genelec monitors.’
