Prime Focus Post Gets Trinnov Treatment

eMerging, UK distributor of French manufacturer Trinnov Audio's range of room/speaker optimization and loudness metering products,has overseen the sale and installation of a 5.1 Trinnov MC Optimizer system at the London facilities of global visual entertainment services group Prime Focus.
The group’s Soho-based facilities offer a range of post-production services, including an Emmy award-winning audio department, and the high-end studios handle sound for TV documentaries, TV advertising and cinema post-production. Built in 2009, Studio 4 is the company's flagship audio room. Although it was producing excellent results in 5.1
for its HD television clients, the audio team wanted to enhance the mixes it produced for film.
"We tried some acoustic treatment in the room and also some room optimization software, but we weren't really getting the results we wanted," explains Ben Hooper, UK Head of Audio at the Prime Focus group.
At the BVE exhibition in February 2011, Hooper heard about Trinnov's MC loudspeaker/room optimization system, and asked Paul Mortimer of Trinnov's UK distributor eMerging for a detailed demonstration. Stereo and surround tests followed at the Old Compton Street facilities, with Trinnov's Director of Business Development, Jacques Di Giovanni, in attendance to calibrate the system.
"The before and after difference was remarkable, tonally and also in terms of the relative balances in the mixes we produced, and their stereo imaging. Their repeatability and playback consistency also improved," explained Ben Hooper.
"The management here was soon convinced of the business case for buying the Trinnov. If you compare the cost of this system to the costs we might have incurred mixing, then renting a cinema soundstage to check the mix, coming back and tweaking the mix, then renting the soundstage again… there was no comparison."
Trinnov's MC Processor analyses the user's acoustic environment using frequency sweeps and a multi-capsule three-dimensional measurement microphone of Trinnov's own design, positioned in the mix engineer's 'sweet spot'. The processor is interspersed into the studio’s signal path between the mixing console and the monitor speakers, and makes carefully calculated adjustments to the frequency, phase and relative delay of the audio channels to correct for the room's deficiencies before the sound reaches the listener.
Despite its complexities, Hooper is enthusiastic about the Trinnov system's usability. "We now have two presets set up, one for TV mixing and one for cinema mixing, and we just switch between the two depending on what work we have booked that day. We're confident that our cinema mixes are now more consistent. We do a lot of mastering of deliverables to HDCAM-SR here from other rooms in Soho, and we now feel much happier about going back to other studios and explaining that they've over-cooked the bass on some of their mixes!"
(LB)