The Ranch goes Atmos® with Merging and Neumann

30 November 2023

Accidental meetings can produce dynamic working partnerships and when that involves a recording studio, it can lead to a truly creative outcome.

Why Dolby Atmos®?

Lewis Chapman and Geoff Swan have individually and jointly been involved in mixing some household names in the music industry including: Anne-Marie, Youngblud, Ed Sheeran, Simply Red and Caroline Polachek to name a few.  Their latest venture combines their wish to work more closely together with a desire to offer their clients Dolby Atmos®. This is often demanded by the label whether it is the choice of the artist or not. Despite the obvious buzz around Atmos for music, there is much to be learned about how to mix the track without destroying the musicians’ original vision and identity. This particularly applies to older material that everybody is familiar with. It is this desire to have control over tracks that Lewis and Geoff have contributed to in stereo that has led to an exciting new Atmos room at The Ranch Production House near Southampton. Immersive at the Ranch features a Merging Technologies and Neumann solution that has already proven to be extremely successful, as we will see.

Lewis Chapman and Geoff Swan

The Ranch is integral to the history of Geoff and Lewis. Both had a background in bands, and both became intrigued by what happened behind the glass when recording. The interest was sparked and the reality of trying to earn a living as a jobbing musician gave way to college and university that focused on music production. An internship for Lewis at the Ranch was where he encountered Geoff who co-owned the studio. Geoff had previously interned and then run Pete Abbott’s studio in Salisbury. He then migrated to setting up The Ranch with Neil Kennedy. Although Lewis and Geoff spent a number of years working in London on a variety of projects in a number of different studios, they kept in touch.

Geoff worked with Mark “Spike” Stent for five years from 2012, which obviously enhanced his reputation as a mixer and producer of choice for numerous musicians. Lewis was freelancing in studios across town and while working with Andy Wright and Gavin Goldberg in early 2020 he became involved with The Qube, firstly in their West London studio and then their newly opened East London site.  In the process of setting up the Qube studio, Lewis met Paul Mortimer from Emerging who came to demonstrate a Trinnov system that Lewis says was life-changing and transformed the studio.  This was also where he first became aware of the Merging Technologies networked audio converters. Although these were not installed in Qube, he kept in touch with the Merging developments. Doing more projects together and the rapid emergence of Atmos, gave them the idea of setting up a room that they could both mix in, rather than just listening and approving somebody else’s.  The chance to locate this room  at The Ranch was serendipitous.

MERGING+ANUBIS

The ability to set out the room as they wanted with experience already learned influenced the design. Hence, the acoustics were sorted from the beginning, leaving the choice of the monitoring components to be finalised.

Lewis is loving the flexible routing options and possibilities that Anubis gives him to optimise his workflow and creativity.  It allows him to spend less time being concerned about the renderer, monitoring the binaural fold down and complex routing to monitor Apple’s spatial audio through logic in realtime, with just a few button presses. All these streams are vital to the Atmos mastering process. “What I love, apart from the amazing audio quality, is that when I turn it on in the morning, it will recover the settings and the patching. Being able to store presets has been so useful and nothing feels like a chore.” Geoff Swan adds, “I am just blown away with the Anubis and there is really no comparison to some of the other units we looked at.”

The Atmos Journey

The ability to work with artists on the Atmos journey has proven to be a huge benefit. It means that everybody involved can discover what works and what doesn’t together. Sending mixes to other producers and mixers who have their own systems is also illuminating, because they may hear something differently and this all feeds the learning experience. The wisdom of having this dedicated Atmos mixing space provides opportunities to work with other Ranch clients to understand the possibilities of spatial mixing.

Geoff comments, “You need to be able to try things out, but the importance of relating to the history of the track is paramount. What might sound plausible with the full speaker set, falls apart in binaural because of poor phase relationships or inappropriate mixing. After all, binaural is the format most likely to be heard by the fan, so it must sound right.”

Although the room is purpose-built for Dolby Atmos, it does not have to be exclusive. Lewis Chapman explained an idea, “We are mainly mixing and mastering so we are currently using the Monitor Mission on the Anubis, but excited to experiment with Music Mission and multitrack with the eventual addition of an A/D card for the Hapi.  There is an amazing mixer in Anubis and you can assign it to what you want and away you go. Anubis is super flexible.”  Geoff Swan added, “The Merging mic amps are simply stunning, so it seems a shame not to use them.”

There might be a lot of studios “having a go” at Atmos but there cannot be many set up with the care and experience evident at The Ranch. With a shared vision to tread mindfully into the immersive world, Geoff and Lewis are adamant that the music comes first, and the technology must be an appropriate support to the original concept of the track. They have a very valid point.