Founded by legendary audio engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug in Oslo, Norway, in 1984, Rainbow Studio is now in the hands of Martin Abrahamsen as Studio Manager and Head Engineer since Kongshaug’s retirement. The studio remains dedicated to recording acoustic genres, including contemporary music, large ensembles and jazz.
While a number 5.1 surround mixes have been created at Rainbow Studio, the principal delivery format to this point has remained stereo...
‘I was introduced to Dolby Atmos at a seminar with Morten Lindberg a few years back,’ says Abrahamsen. ‘Back then, Blu-ray was the distribution format. This offered similar challenges for distribution as with previous surround formats.
‘But when Apple launched Dolby Atmos through its Apple Music streaming services and other dominant streaming services followed shortly after, we were super excited and had no doubt that this is the way the water flows. We decided that we simply had to embrace this new immersive format.’
An upgrade to Dolby Atmos followed, with Johannes Mollø-Christensen from Norwegian pro audio distributor ProLyd assisting. The result includes a Harrison mixing console; Dynaudio Core 59, Core 47, Core Sub monitoring; DAD AX32 audio routing and conversion; and an Avid Pro Tools HDX3 DAW system.
‘We landed on a 9.1.4 system featuring the Core series from Dynaudio,’ Abrahamsen explains. ‘The precision, fullness and clarity of these loudspeakers are at a level that few other manufacturers can match – so, the choice for monitoring was easy. The monitor system has been installed in collaboration with the highly skilled engineer, Alf Christian Hvidsteen, and calibrated to Dolby specifications by David Ziegler from Dolby Laboratories.’
Rainbow Studio is now ready to handle several different immersive workflow scenarios – Dolby Atmos mixes from scratch, as well as upmixing to Dolby Atmos from stems. Further, the system has also been designed for placing elements in the three-dimensional, immersive sound space at the recording stage, which opens up new creative possibilities for the artists, composers, producers and performers who record here.
