M+E Daily

Dolby and The Kitchen Spain are all about technical excellence. As a new member of the Dolby HE Certification Programme (with an esteemed group of only 74 others worldwide), The Kitchen Spain has achieved a new level of technical advancement and achievement, with the installation of its new Dolby Atmos Home.

For over 50 years, Dolby has been the relied-upon soundtrack guide for content and audio professionals.

As the industry has advanced and Atmos-original sound content is being requested more and more by sophisticated home viewing audiences, Victor Martinez and Ainhoa Martin, of The Kitchen Spain, wanted to grab the opportunity to offer clients an almost perfect reproduction of original atmos-related quality sound, for any given project and for all genres of programming.

“With all of the new platforms and service providers such as Netflix; Discovery+; Apple TV; Sky UK; Sky Germany, Amazon Prime, etc., we knew that if a programme came to us, that was originally mixed in Dolby Atmos, that we would need to replicate that same sound quality,” Victor Martinez explained.

Conversely, Dolby has worked closely with major manufacturer’s such as LG, Toshiba, Panasonic, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, by incorporating their sound system with the Dolby Atmos experience for the home viewer.

“The Dolby name, ”according to Martinez,“ has always stood for quality, and we want to affirm that our clients will find that same quality here at The Kitchen Spain. The ability to produce Dolby quality sound for our clients also opens up many new opportunities for us to accept all formats of programming. Additionally, we know that viewers are now looking for a near-cinematic experience at home.”

The first commission for our Dolby Atmos Home certified mixing room was the quality control of an original Spanish theatrical film for which we also recorded some of the original voices for a national film, a project that would not have come to us if we hadn’t invested in Dolby”.

“We know that great sound will always enhance the viewing experience,” Martinez added. “This is true not only in theatres, but in today’s advanced home television set up as well.”

The Dolby Atmos Home Studio Certification programme aids film producers and directors in identifying dubbing studios that have superior equipment, acoustics and competence. The programme measures room acoustics, monitoring standards (visual as well as audio), equipment selection, installation standards, synchronisation accuracy, mixing competence, and technical experience.

These are all measured and evaluated as part of the respected Dolby certification process.

Dolby Atmos takes Dolby’s traditional 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound set-ups a step further by adding a third, overhead dimension. You’re no longer constrained to a stereo system, or standard six-or seven-channel arrangement. With Dolby Atmos, you experience an auditory atmosphere, as the name implies, that are encompassed by scenic sounds from your equipment, bouncing sounds off your ceiling. The end result: an environment that more accurately represents how we experience sound in real life.

“We believe that a future requirement of high-end audio dubbing will be the need to offer the same quality sound that is now expected in feature films,” Victor Martinez added. “We want to be among the first dubbing studios to give this to our clients.”

Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels (utilises up to 64 speakers in a theatrical set-up), allowing sounds to be interpreted as three-dimensional objects.

“If a production is made originally in Atmos, now we are able to create the dubbed version in Atmos too. We can also create a new Atmos mix from a 5.1. or even from stereo, if we have the stems of the production. We can create stream outputs that end viewers can experience in every Atmos enabled device, such as studio, or file outputs, that you can use in your professional workflows,” Martinez concluded.

Dolby Atmos capabilities also let us offer our customers the “one mix fits all systems” work process: where one Atmos mix can easily (in many cases automatically) be down mixed to 7.1, 5,1, 2.1 and so on.