QUBE East – New Dolby Atmos Studio Opts for a Merging/Neumann Solution

22 August 2023

The idea of studios hiring rooms to producers and musicians is not new, but establishing a purpose-built creative hub for members puts a different slant on this idea. The principals behind the Qube facilities are Amin Hamzianpour and Nicholas Sonuga who met in 2017 when both were pursuing careers as producers and songwriters.

The studio they were both using was less than ideal and comparing notes between sessions in a cramped kitchen not only fostered a friendship, it also sparked an idea to come up with a better solution for creatives like them. Making a space where like-minded people could compare notes and spark off each other seemed like a good idea, but often rental costs were prohibitive for a space that might be empty for much of the time. Additionally, the cost of recording equipment was often difficult to manage when technology was moving fast. Other creative disciplines were facing the same challenges, so the idea of having a space that could be used as needed and where the talent can work and socialise in the same building, seemed like a great place to start.

A location in West London, close to the A40 was chosen for the first Qube site. Members enjoy a discount on room hire but anybody can book a room for as little as half a day and enjoy the on-site facilities; not only musicians, but podcasters, YouTubers, artists, photographers and any related business are all encouraged. Unsurprisingly, Qube West as its now called, has proven to be wildly popular and thoughts turned to addressing the changes that have transformed East London into a desirable residential area with an appropriately large creative community. As luck would have it, other local stakeholders were very receptive to the idea and the Qube concept fitted neatly into these plans.

The experience of Qube West and the changing market allowed more ambitious plans to be incorporated into Qube East and notably, a Dolby Atmos mixing facility was going to be needed to address the rapid growth of immersive audio platforms. The equipping of such a room is not for the faint-hearted so expertise from Emerging was an obvious choice since a Trinnov system had previously been installed in the main West studio and had proven to be very successful.

Even though it is extremely early days for Qube East, we wanted to find out how it was progressing and to see what key components had been installed and how the Emerging team had contributed to achieving the managements’ goals. Co-founder, Nicholas Sonuga was on hand to shed some light on the progress so far.  

Obviously, the original facility has been a success so what prompted moving East?

East is the epicenter of London’s creative community, so we had always intended on opening on that side of town. Although we’ve only been open a few months, we’ve seen a massive demand from new members waiting for us to open on their doorstep. The vision for Qube has always been to offer flexible, premium studios across a number of easily accessible sites; Qube East is the first in the string of the expansion rollout.

Qube East looks to be a much more up-market building but in an unusual location for a recording complex. What was the thinking behind that?

We worked with the landowners of Canary Wharf to play a key role in helping to change the identity of the new neighboring development, Wood Wharf. Its intention is to be a stark contrast to the financial district, a creative district full of fresh bars, restaurants and creative businesses. It was an exciting opportunity to really put our stamp on one of London’s prime locations and help shape the culture in a meaningful way. 

What has been the response to Qube East? What do the members think of the location, the facilities and the vibe?

The response has been incredible, we had 500 people on our waiting list and new member applications have exceeded expectations!

When you started thinking about equipping the studios, where did you start? Was this based on previous experience with Qube West, or did you adopt a different approach?

We based the fundamentals on West but with a slight upgrade, bringing the tech more in line with the premium feel of the building. You’ll find Neumann and PMC in every room, and innovative new studio offerings ranging from fully automated video streaming rooms for DJ’s and podcasters, through to post-production edit suites. We’d like Qube to be a home for all content creators across various disciplines, so this really is our first step in diversifying our offering to cater for a wider audience.

What was the main motivation for installing a Dolby Atmos studio? Did you have concerns that the East London location might limit the take-up of projects?

We wanted to cater to engineers that may not have the means to install their own set up. At Qube, we’re all about carving out affordable and flexible access to creative professionals at all levels. Until now, if you wanted an Atmos mix, you’d need to book an expensive room at one of the established studios, whereas Qube offers an alternative, booking by the hour. This allows our members and clients to mix in Atmos without the budget constraints or time limitations. East London has the largest demographic of music creators in the country, so we were sure that the rise of Dolby Atmos for music would allow us to cater for them accordingly.

What has been the reaction to the Atmos facility? Is it what you hoped for or expected?

It sounds incredible, it’s certainly the best sounding room in the building. The immersive audio is unreal, it really allows you to place yourself within the audio field and experience the music to its full potential.

In terms of suppliers of gear to the Atmos studio, where did you start? Was there an initial “must have” item and if so, why was that?

The most important components were clean conversion and neutral monitoring. After doing some research and getting opinions from experienced engineers, we’d narrowed it down to Merging and AVID for the conversion and Neumann and PMC for monitoring. We were steered towards Merging for their reputation as well as their helpful demo service, we were blown away with the transparency of the conversion along with the handy integration of the Anubis/Hapi control system which gave us the functionality we needed in a rack and desktop format. An important feature was being able to easily switch between stereo and Atmos mixes, as well as simplified plug and play options for clients bringing in their own rigs. The Merging rig gave us everything we were looking for in a tech spec.

Who designed the studio and did you have an acoustician involved from the start?

We worked with Sustainable Acoustics and Acoustics GRG on the design and build of the entire complex, with heavy input from our team.

Why Neumann speakers? Were other makes considered?

I’m a massive fan of Neumann speakers, I consider them to sit at the top of the market whilst they deliver serious bang for buck. We did shootouts against PMC and Focal and the Neumanns just sounded the best as well as being priced competitively. The rich yet neutral sound is a pleasure to work on but isn’t too clinical so doesn’t suck the life out of music. The 310 three-way drivers offer excellent depth and spatial fields which I haven’t heard in any other speakers in the same price bracket – truly impressive engineering.

How did Paul Mortimer’s Emerging team get involved? What equipment have they supplied?

We first met Paul when purchasing a Trinnov ST2 Pro system for our West London site, he was always on hand and super helpful, so was a natural choice when considering suppliers. For Qube East, Emerging supplied the Merging Atmos system which is a Hapi MK2 and an Anubis. These are networked so we can control all the monitoring from the Anubis and the two units combined gives us sufficient outputs for 7.1.4. It is such a great sounding system and ticks all the boxes for easy control of the monitoring.

How much have those items contributed to the success of the studio? How has this made life easier for the Qube staff and ultimately, the punters using the room?

It’s still early days as we haven’t yet officially opened the room for bookings but features such as the integration of Sound ID Reference from Sonarworks allowed us to tune the rooms’ acoustics to sound phenomenal, complimenting the physical acoustic treatment nicely. The Atmos rig is pretty intuitive to use, even our community staff and assistant engineers can fire it up without tons of technical experience. Ease of use is super important for us as we have so many different people in and out of the studios, we like to make things as streamlined as possible to avoid complexities.

How impressed have you been with the knowledge and practical skills of the Emerging team? Do you feel that you got what you expected, or did they exceed your expectations in any way?

Very impressed, Ben Andrews was extremely generous with his time and technical knowledge, he visited us to provide a comprehensive demo as well as being available for support during the tech install stage. All stakeholders including Dolby, Neumann and Emerging worked seamlessly to deliver a stellar installation.

Byron Carmona was Qube’s General Manager and was intimately involved in the practicalities of the installation. Who better to comment on working with Emerging?

Working with Ben has been a pleasure. Since day one he was very helpful and showed us the capabilities of the Merging rig: from the high quality conversion to the expandability of the gear we have.
One of the main goals was that we required a setup that could be used both on our house rig and as a plug-and-play (for any engineers bringing their own machine), and Ben was able to showcase this from the beginning and answer any questions we had.

In addition to the above, Ben hosted a training session with our Engineers and the feedback was extremely positive, on both Emerging’s service and the quality of the Merging equipment.

The feedback that we have had from our engineers regarding the quality of the Merging rig, combined with the Neumann monitoring system, has been incredible. We have seen very big smiles in the studio every time we fire up a reference track. The Anubis is the star of the show each time, the ability to reference from 7.1.4 to a 2.1 folded-down mix with the press of a button is a Godsend.