What does a backyard Dolby Atmos home music studio look like when you’re a sound engineer for major artists? The shed of my dreams, that’s what
- It’s a full Dolby Atmos mixing studio… in a shed
- Designed to deliver accurate Atmos audio with pin-sharp precision
- Artists are delighted with the mixes, which required no tweaks
If like me you used to have, or still have, a backyard office or shed for working in, you’re going to be green with envy at the sight of mixing maestro Kurt Martinez’s personal Dolby Atmos studio.
The award-nominated Atmos expert designed and built his own backyard office and filled it with enviable gear, and if he doesn’t call it his Spatial shed I’m going to be very disappointed.
Martinez has been nominated for the prestigious Music Producers Guild award as Atmos Engineer of the Year, and he spent three years as the Head Dolby Atmos Mix Engineer at the world-famous Dean Street studios. He’s worked on live and recorded music by a host of stars including Kylie Minogue, Def Leppard, Soft Play, Billy Idol and Duran Duran.
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Like many freelancers, Martinez figured that having a home office was a much better idea than a long commute into the city, and in Martinez’s case that decision was compounded by being a new dad. So he built an entire Atmos mixing studio in his back garden, doing everything himself apart from the electrics and internet connectivity.
How to make a spatial shed
As Mixonline reports, Martinez built the 2.5m x 3.5m garden office with a combination of porous timber walls to absorb the low frequencies, acoustic panelling in the ceiling and sides, a large rear bookshelf for dispersion, and acoustic slat panels at the front. There’s thick acoustic underlay below the laminate floor and even the furniture has a function: the armchairs and rug are there to absorb audio reflections.
With the building ready, the next step was to add the tech. Martinez uses a Pro Tools system based around an Audient ORIA, which sends audio to a Ginger Audio Ground Control Sphere that’s controlled by an Elgato Stream Deck+.
The speakers are striking. They’re PMC6-2 left and right monitors, a PMC6 center speaker, an 8 Sub LFE, and Ci30 height and surround monitors. Final mixes are tested on AirPods Max and a Sonos home theater setup to check that still sounds good on consumer Atmos hardware as well a studio-level setup.
I used to have a very similar-looking setup for my own home studio, but sadly I didn’t have Martinez’s high-end gear or even more importantly, Martinez’s ears, which is why nobody’s nominating me for anything.
But I do love to see a good audio project, and it’s clearly been very successful: according to ETNow.com Martinez’s last five full-length records, which he mixed in that studio, required no tweaking at all when he tested them in large commercial studios.
All five of those records have been signed off by their delighted artists. I’d like to think that one of them was Shed Seven.
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