A new recording complex has been opened in Dubai by LP:ME on the 30th floor of Dubai’s Jumeirah Lake Towers, making it one of the highest studio facilities in the world. Throughout, the studios are equipped with PMC monitors.
Home to artists from the Middle East and North Africa, LP:ME has been operating as a studio for 25 years, having begun with tape and a single room. The move to its new location has been in progress for the past two years. It now offers three main recording studios, including a flagship space for stereo production, and two Dolby Atmos studios. There are also six DAW-based producer rooms, and an in-house video production studio that provides bidirectional A/V communication between all rooms so that production sessions can be live streamed.
PMC monitoring was chosen for every room by LP:ME CEO Daniel Romanovskyi, in conjunction with Eddy Jazra, head of the facility’s audio department, and Kevin Boujikian, project director and PMC partner for UAE, who was heavily involved in the design and equipping of the entire complex.
‘The goal was to meet world class standards by integrating the very best equipment,’ Boujikian says. ‘Daniel wanted to create one of the most exclusive and best studios in the MENA region, and I was very excited to be part of it.’
LP:ME’s stereo room is equipped with a 48-channel Solid State Logic Duality Fuse mixing console, paired with a quartet of PMC’s flagship QB1-XBDA monitors and two PMC BST subwoofers. This set-up is only found in a handful of other facilities around the globe, including Netflix and Interscope studios. ‘It’s more than just a stereo room, it’s an experience,’ Jazra says. ‘The sonic image is so clear that you could spend hours in that room without fatigue. We have also added a pair of PMC 6 active studio monitors for contrast and for close-field work.’
LP:ME’s two Atmos suites are designed to appeal to the burgeoning immersive audio market. The largest room has an 11.1.6 speaker set-up comprising three PMC BB6 XBD-A monitors for LCR, eight ci40s for rear and sides, six ci65s for the ceiling hung overheads and a pair of PMC BST subwoofers. The second room has a 9.1.4 configuration with three PMC MB3 XBD-As, 10 ci65s and four PMC8-2 subs. The facility’s six producer rooms also have PMC monitoring – PMC6 in most rooms and IB1S-AIII in the largest room.
PMC Head of Sales at Pro Global Studio Products, Maurice Patist played a key part in commissioning the PMC monitoring systems, particularly in the two Atmos rooms. He also conducted a complete review of the facility’s audio design. ‘The attention to detail and absolute desire to do it properly allowed us to create the right combination of proper room design, acoustics and PMC monitoring systems to maximise the performance of the control rooms,’ he says. ‘The result is two incredible performing Dolby Atmos mix studios and an equally exceptional stereo control room, all of which deliver all the performance and gear an engineer could wish for.’
‘I am proud that we have managed to defy all the odds and build what is arguably one of the best sounding studios in the world,’ Romanovskyi adds.
