Month: July 2021

Eloise Veale, Creative Director of Veale Associates spoke to us about her work designing sound studios and the key things to consider when undertaking a design. Her projects include The University of Winchester, Dean Street Recording Studios, Kerrang! Radio, Smooth Radio, The University of West London, Classic FM, Frontier Developments Games, Playfish Games and Lansdown Studios.

Looking after the design side of VA, she directs how spaces look and creates the vibe for the environment; finishes, furniture, materials and wall graphics…what you see. Her role is about ideas, understanding and listening, testing spaces, recording how users operate and move through their environments, and proving the project aesthetic to generate concepts, ergonomics and a style that works for each individual client.

Veale got involved with the family business as a result of conversation whist sat waiting for a flight. “My Father looked at me and said he had been thinking. In the past I had created a few sketches for him to show clients how their facilities were going to look. At the time, VA was working for GMG Radio who were looking to re-brand their studios and meeting rooms, so new finishes needed to be selected and graphics needed to be designed. VA were also about to start working on a relocation project with Classic FM which involved branding and designing a new waiting area for them, so my Father asked me if I wanted to get involved. The rest is history.”

We sometimes hear stories about how a studio build has gone horribly wrong but it can be a smooth and enjoyable journey if done properly. “The key to a successful build is to ensure the studio is built to expectation. There are in essence two sides that need to be supported and catered for; the high level management with specific business and facility requirements which also includes brand identity, and the users. The needs of both sides have to be fully explored to make the space fit for purpose and tick all the boxes. Then on top of that you have the building demands and limitations, external considerations, what the constraints are, any statutory considerations, and what is practical cost wise. Most mistakes that happen in the studio creation can be traced back to not taking the time at the outset. There are critical issues that need to be agreed such as how much sound isolation is required, will the audio being created in the studio impact on neighbours and how environmental noise will impact on the studio and recordings. Ideally it’s wise not to compromise on the acoustics; after all you wouldn’t put a Ferrari engine in a Mini or as Pirelli say “power is nothing without control”.

As for challenging projects, one that comes to mind is the University of West London. “The University needed new recording studios to replace existing ones that were about to be demolished due to a site expansion. The facilities were critical to them being able to deliver courses and student exam work so they had to be finished in time for their return after the Easter break. They chose a space in their basement that was being used as an engineer’s workshop and decided to put a live room, control room, drum booth and post production studio down there. Most projects of this kind have a minimum lead time of 6 months for design and install but they needed studios incredibly fast due to the main contractor’s construction programme, so we only had 10 weeks to design and build new flagship facilities. All acoustic projects are different and this one was so fast moving we had to absorb the unknown literally as things presented themselves. The project included a lengthy process of excavating the floor to create enough head height and be able to float the studios which challenged the programme even more! The project was a great success, it was handed over on time and snag free – something the main contractor Willmott Dixon hadn’t experienced before.”

Advances in technology makes more things possible in both design and manufacturing, more and more products and materials are being created that push what’s been before, offering more and more creative opportunity. “Design and technology influence how people use their environments. Things also get smaller, less and less space is required to do the same things as equipment becomes more and more comprehensive and accessible. Space and real estate is always a premium and anything not needed is consolidated. So everything shrinks, and with that comes more and more compact environments with higher demands and new challenges.”

“One particular project springs to mind where the design has been directly influenced by the pandemic. We have had to reduce the number of meeting rooms in the design so they can be enlarged and accommodate the 2m social distancing rule as per their policy, but this will have a large impact on them in the future and the services they can accommodate due to reduced facilities. I’m not keen on designing for Covid as this is a temporary state we find ourselves in, plus many aren’t in a position for a complete redesign so really this becomes an internal management process on how to operate safely within the current restrictions. If we designed for Covid every workspace would need redesigning, spaces would need to grow significantly and unfortunately you can’t just add water to make a building grow! It will be a case of having as few people in as possible rather than the old ethos of ‘cram as many as possible!’ So not an economical approach when so many businesses are really struggling and they need to be making their money work as hard as possible for them.”

As for the future, although much work is now being done at home the need for a professional sound studio has certainly not gone away – this will always be the real test. At the beginning of the pandemic and many adapting to working from home we found ourselves being asked about the difficulties with monitoring, and were reviewing a number of home working environments. Many engineers are used to recording and mixing in a high end studio and they were striving to achieve a similar and accurate sound at home. We found ourselves analysing reflections and negative acoustic properties in rooms and identifying how to cancel it out using EQ for a more accurate representation.” 

Few things are as evocative as sound; the way the right score can produce an emotional reaction is something film-makers have been capitalising on for decades, and more recently, videogame developers too. Games are now telling more complex stories and we are seeing more cinematic aspects incorporated into their sound design. There is now 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.

Mixing on headphones is part and parcel of the mix process, as is mixing in stereo, 5.1 and 7.1, but many games studios are predominantly using headphones to mix due to in-house limitations, resulting in companies being reliant on external facilities to record for them, driving up cost and reducing in-house flexibility. Having internal recording and mix facilities mean that companies are no longer dependent on outsourcing and acquire the ability to respond rapidly to fast changing game requirements. Good quality facilities afford the opportunity to produce more in-house, plus every games studio is looking for the best talent and good facilities are key to attracting them.

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. “We really wanted the whole team to be together in one location” said James Dixon, Director of Operations at Frontier Developments. “Trinity were planning on building some new, modern offices which tied perfectly to our needs, and allowed us to work together to specify the space.” 

In 2018 Frontier moved into their new building, 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. Veale Associates were part of the process to design their new rooms. “It was important to us to provide quality facilities for our audio team” added Dixon. “They had been making do with converted, untreated rooms and what we were producing was pretty amazing given the circumstances, but this afforded us the opportunity to take our audio to the next level.”

Veale Associates created acoustic and construction designs, delivering 12 Sound Design Rooms, two recording studios with one Foley pit, two Audio Mix suites and an AV Editing suite. The 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. Eddie Veale, Principal of Veale Associates said “Our acoustic and studio design knowledge was critical to the design team in order to develop the layout to accommodate the sound facilities. 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 audio team are very happy with their facilities. “We had to strike a balance between rooms that designers could spend all day in, enjoying natural sunlight and rooms that were fully acoustically treated for critical listening” said Jim Croft, Head of Audio at Frontier Developments. “Everything has been used to its fullest and you can hear the results in our games! Happy staff make the best audio.”

Mixing on headphones is and always will be part and parcel of the mixing process as is mixing on stereo, 5.1 and 7.1. “It remains an essential part of mixing because most of our customer base is listening on phones. We have to cater for all levels of consumer quality. We use telemetry to detect the number of speakers a consumer is using, and apply different levels of compression and volume to different buses accordingly” said Croft.

However, having a pro level mix space rather than mixing on headphones alone has certainly impacted positively on the work practises at Frontier. “They have massively improved our work practices and raised our quality bar” added Croft. “Having the pro mix space allows you to mix with true accuracy in surround and stereo, and be confident that what you are hearing is a true picture of what is there. Being able to mix in a properly calibrated reference room as we go along makes mixing in the last couple of weeks before release much easier, as does our new bus centric Wwise mixing setup. Also having dedicated recording spaces – particularly with our fantastic foley floor – leads to much greater depth, detail and originality in our soundscape because we are using libraries less. However, if anything, I believe headphone tech will grow in popularity with the advent of VR, AR and HRTF tech. Consumers have never really taken to traditionally unwieldy 5.1 surround in the home, although sound bar surround tech is advancing quickly.”

Looking forward, Frontier faces some huge but exciting challenges. The quality expectations of audio have grown along with the scale and detail of the games being made. Having professional audio facilities have not only proven to be great value for money but given the ever growing demand for content, Frontier are able to afford the opportunity to produce more in-house, to experiment and develop in a fast paced industry.   

With more game audio spaces being multipurpose there can be some design challenges. “One challenge can be creating a benign acoustic that works for most sound sets.  The acoustic balance to create a variable environment is quite fine, especially when designing for different types of games; the dynamic game where the player needs to maintain a high level of focus on the forward activity while being very aware of what is happening in the wings benefits from a front/sides/rear speaker configuration – a different setup where there is a speaker mid front, one each side and one behind – this is much better than trying to work in the standard stereo format and adds higher definition to the mix that pays dividends in the final master.”

The studio needs to be comfortable space conducive to collaboration and fully supports the creativity but there are some differences when designing audio mixing studios for video games and music production. “The fundamentals of studios are the same, the significant difference is configuration for use – thus a studio for music is different to one for post or games.  Music is about grabbing the listener and bringing them into the wall of sound to maximise the experience, the trick here is to create the mixing environment such that the engineer is in the same listening space as the listener will be so he/she can mix for the thrill, passion and excitement.  Similar for post except the outlet is cinema or television and here there is a chasm of difference – the cinema is a big landscape with the audience scattered in all parts and so experiences will vary and effects are often used as a focus, television widely relates to the home lounge and where background music is played a careful balance is essential to avoid dialogue being drowned out – in fact a more intimate acoustic can help to clarify the effects.  Games can be considered as the most challenging – ideally differing configurations are required to match the game format – games with a lot of surround ambience benefit from an ethereal distant background to avoid detraction from the focus and lead effects with an excellent definition for the foreground sounds, essential when transposing to headphones.”

Headphone technology continues to grow in popularity with the advent of VR, AR and HRTF tech. “Mixing on headphones is part and parcel of the mix process, as is mixing in stereo, 5.1 and 7.1, but many games studios are predominantly using headphones to mix due to in-house limitations, resulting in companies being reliant on external facilities to record for them, driving up cost and reducing in-house flexibility. Having internal recording and mix facilities mean that companies are no longer dependent on outsourcing and acquire the ability to respond rapidly to fast changing game requirements. Good quality facilities afford the opportunity to produce more in-house, plus every games studio is looking for the best talent and good facilities are key to attracting them.”

Although those making do with converted, untreated rooms are producing pretty amazing results given the circumstances, one of the biggest challenges faced is how to sound proof, dampen, treat small to medium sized rooms in a way that works for multiuse. “Many engineers have their own studio where they are doing their best to continue with their work and frequently wish for the ambience and sound quality of their day job but a small room will, by virtue of its size and limitations, always develop a character that will produce better results for some types of work than others.  Most home studios will not have the space, isolation and acoustics of the professional studio and, unless the owner is prepared to make a sizeable investment it will never work as well.  Beware, home studios often begin quite modestly and grow with a good work flow, then problems begin to arise – investigations frequently resolve that these result from early decisions or constructions that can be very difficult to remedy without a complete redesign and reconstruction, so it is important to have a clear focus from the outset.”

“Having a pro mix space allows you to mix with true accuracy in surround and stereo, and be confident that what you are hearing is a true picture of what is there. Being able to mix in a properly calibrated reference room as you go brings the ability to respond rapidly to vary fast changing game requirements and makes mixing in the last couple of weeks before release much easier.”

The studio is not just about the sound but also the aesthetic as its what creates the first impression and what is heard then has to excel. “Provided the front end space design planning is well prepared it is not too difficult, but let this get out of balance and the challenges quickly grow.  I begin with concept, the final appearance.  Once the mood boards are signed off the real acoustic work can begin – looking at geometry, selecting materials and engineering the acoustic environment.”

“There are critical issues that need to be agreed such as how much sound isolation is required, will the sound level of the audio being created in the studio impact on neighbours and what could the repercussions be, and how will environmental noise impact on the studio and recordings.  It’s very important to determine the exact sizes for the room or rooms and bigger does not always mean better. And, of course, these decisions are generally dependent on budget. Once these things are understood the room(s) can then be designed around them. It’s invaluable to talk with sound designers, mixers, Foley artists and sound supervisors about what they like and don’t like to refine things and make the space work for them.”

Dedicated audio facilities enable to audio team to be more efficient as they are in one location, respond quicker as they are in one location that encourages team interaction. A key studio can also double up as an amazing acoustically treated presentation space that not only looks awesome but sounds out of this world – a real bonus to show off your studios capabilities and wow clients.”