At the heart of Stuttgart’s historic Bad Cannstatt district, Tonstudio Gress is celebrating a newly completed 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos control room, built around Genelec 8000 Series monitors to accommodate projects ranging from film and television to museum installations and music.
‘We’ve been working with immersive sound for years,’ Gress explains. ‘The Genelecs gave us better localisation, more detail and less fatigue. It was exactly what we needed.’
Founded in 1989 by brothers Alexander and Raymond Gress, Tonstudio Gress has evolved from a small local facility into a respected multidisciplinary audio house. Today, the studio specialises in cinematic audio, spatial sound design and high-end voice production, delivering finely crafted work for both national and international clients. ‘Whether you’re a solo artist or a major institution, your project gets our full attention,’ says Raymond Gress.
Regarding it as a masterclass in intuitive design, offering clarity, localisation and creative consistency, the Dolby Atmos control room mark the next step in the facility’s long-standing commitment to immersive formats. The system includes Genelec 8040B monitors for LCRs, 8030Cs for surrounds and 8020Ds for height channels. Accompanied by an Avid MTRX interface and DADman software, the fully analogue set-up promises both creative focus and technical reliability.
While immersive production has gained widespread popularity in recent years, Tonstudio Gress has been laying the groundwork for decades. From early binaural radio plays recorded in the forests of southern Germany to years of 5.1 mixing, the team’s experience shaped a natural transition into Dolby Atmos. The studio’s original Genelec 5.1 system of five 1030As and a 1092A subwoofer remains in regular use as a reference for every one of the studio’s TV mixes.
For the new room, support from reseller SMM Munich and Dolby’s David Ziegler helped ensure a balanced and cost-effective design. Final calibration was provided by Roger Baltensperger, optimising the room’s response for consistent, fatigue-free monitoring. ‘It’s a set-up that just works – day in, day out,’ Gress reports. ‘We were able to get the precise results we wanted and stay completely within our budget.’
Since completing the new room, Tonstudio Gress has expanded its Dolby Atmos Music offering, handling mixes for major streaming platforms, as well as immersive postproduction for film and TV. The space has also expanded museum and exhibition work with spatially detailed soundscapes that create powerful storytelling.
‘It gives us fascinating new possibilities and lets us craft something that people really experience,’ Gress says.
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