Introduction:

Games are now telling more complex stories and we are seeing more cinematic aspects incorporated into their sound design. There is a shift towards hyper-realism; delivering cinematic experiences with emotional heft and using complex object based audio to achieve a more immersive sound environment. Put simply it means more content with more depth and detail and more demands.

Frontier Developments moved to the Cambridge Science Park in 2005 and the company has been gradually growing ever since. By 2017, they occupied 3 separate buildings on the park as they wanted the whole team to be together in one location.

Frontier moved into their new building and as part of their new home they decided new professional audio facilities would be hugely beneficial; providing a great work environment, enabling the audio team to be more efficient, respond quicker and encourage team interaction, as well as reducing the need for outsourcing.

Challenges:

• Provide quality facilities for our audio team
• 12 Sound Design Rooms,
• Two recording studios with one Foley pit,
• Two Audio Mix suites and
• An AV Editing suite.

Facilities were designed to provide each sound designer with their own independent and acoustically treated working environment, with separate dedicated rooms for accurate recording and mixing on 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound formats; as well as providing the infrastructure for future Dolby Atmos productions.

Being involved at the front end when the project was still a green field site enabled us to work with the architects to build the necessary studio isolation into the fabrication of the building rather than trying to retrospectively fit it. The building design featured an impressive fully glazed façade with louvers to control sun glare which looked great but acoustically provided a number of reflection, flanking and noise issues; being able to work with the architects to deliver something that intrinsically worked saved Frontier a lot of time, headaches and money. The rooms needed to be quality sound rooms, compliant with industry standards and meet certain aspirations for Frontier’s uplifting work ethos and achievement.”  

The pro mix space allows for mixing with true accuracy in surround and stereo and gives confidence that what is heard is a true picture of what is there. Being able to mix in a properly calibrated reference room makes mixing in the last couple of weeks before release much easier. Having dedicated recording spaces – particularly with the foley floor – leads to much greater depth, detail and originality in the soundscape because the need to use libraries is less.