Tileyard X Studios is set up so that people can bring their own work environment into the space at TYX Studios, just connect and go.

Our members can be anything: producers, writers, mixers, composers, also in film & TV and gaming. We have such a large community but when it comes to immersive audio, many of them don’t have a space to experiment – other than in their own headphones.

Dolby Atmos is such an emerging format for music, we were keen to introduce people in a way that isn’t going to scare them off.

TYX Studios provides them an affordable and easy way to get to know this format through one of our premier recording studios in London: the TYX Studios Dolby Atmos studio. They have the power to transform their content with the technology that we have here.

ORIA is really at the heart of that technology.

We’ve had a Dolby Atmos studio at TYX Studios for around a year now. It’s been a journey!

Atmos is a relatively new medium for music and we’ve built several Atmos studios across the Tileyard estate for some of our tenants. This is the first attempt at our own.

Our original setup comprised several units, each of which did different aspects of what ORIA does now: AD/DA, time alignment and EQ, Dante routing, etc For example we used a dedicated AOIP unit for EQ & time alignment (which is usually used in media facilities) which gave rise to clock issues, including the inability to change from a 48khz sample rate at all. We also use this room for stereo production and this caused issues when people brought in projects set to 44.1.

Put simply, everything was quite convoluted and a lot more time was needed to set up each individual Atmos session. Sometimes it would take upwards of 20 minutes – or even as long as half an hour – to get a client up and running. A far cry from our aim for two minutes!

Having it all in one unit has allowed us to remove ourselves from a Dante ecosystem in this space which means considerably less set up time for the multitude of clients that use this space dry.

From the outset we had been looking for a technology solution that can fit into our philosophy and ethos.

Minimum overhead on time and minimum need for assistance on setup. Of course there is always going to be a need for compromise in these areas. We wanted to make the least amount of compromise possible.

That goes from how the room sounds, the tuning of the speakers and the time alignment, to how quickly can we get someone with their own rig, their own laptop into this space and get them up and running.

I think that ORIA is the only solution that can really cater to that. It is ORIA’s rollout in our Dolby Atmos studio that really changed the way that we can interact with our clients.

They can now come into this space and it’s seamless for them. They don’t have to upset their workflow in order to be able to integrate into the space. ORIA software is intuitive and easy to use and the speaker set up is very easy to understand too.

The important thing about our Dolby Atmos room at TYX Studios is a lot of people can start the process at home on their laptop. When they get here however, they need to be able to monitor it in an environment that is representative.

It’s like the ‘car test’ isn’t it? You need a space where you have that full Atmos monitoring experience in a room that’s tuned well, where the hardware, time alignment and EQ is all trustworthy.

That’s what the ORIA does for us. All in one package!

GRAMMY Award-winning producer, engineer and mixer Matthew Lawrence is a regular at the TYX Studios Dolby Atmos studio. He has a star-studded back catalogue which includes Adele, Amy Winehouse & Ellie Goulding and is well-versed in working in immersive audio.

Matt explains how his own workflow has improved at TYX Studios since the arrival of ORIA.

What’s refreshing here at TYX Studios is that I plug one cable in and everything just works.

I have worked in many Atmos rooms – some of them are network based – and it has led to a few problems. It can be quite complex; things can be set up differently for the last person.

You might only work on some of these systems every few months. So you learn the system, you know what you’re doing for that session, but… three months later I’ve worked on 50 other projects and I can’t remember how it was set up before!

It can be incredibly frustrating and incredibly time-consuming. When you know it’s working you mix with confidence. When you think it’s working…you hope it’s working, there’s a niggle and you don’t quite bring your best to the mix.

So having one lead you know it works. It’s never been a problem for me, it just means I’m mixing with absolute confidence from the off.

I would 100% recommend ORIA to others looking to build an Atmos studio. I don’t think there is another unit in this price range – or even within reasonable financial reach of its price range – that offers all the features the ORIA does with similar qualitative output.

We are building another Atmos studio… and we will be putting an ORIA straight in this time!