Blue Marble Sound, a studio built in a former boxing gym in Loveland, CO that’s the brainchild of multi-faceted engineer Amol Kitwadkar, is equipped with a monitoring system utilizing L-Acoustics L-ISA immersive technology and loudspeakers.
Originally from Sangli, in western India, Kitwadkar spent five years studying Hindustani Classical Music before moving to the U.S. In 2013, he started a band, Unified Diversity, inspired by his desire to bring people and sounds from around the world together. During the pandemic lockdown, he watched a webinar starring A.R. Rahman, an Indian composer who won two Oscars for original score and song written for the 2009 film Slumdog Millionaire, and after hearing Rahman extol the virtues of using spatial sound for music, Kitwadkar realized he wanted to make immersive technology part of his artistic strategy.
Kitwadkar thoroughly researched and implemented his new studio setup, taking his team — including Anthony J. Catalano, CEO of Denver-based pro audio vendor MediaVine Pro Audio/Video and acoustician Tim Gulsrud of Soundpost Acoustics — to Los Angeles in June 2021. They met with Dolby and other potential equipment vendors and found numerous resources.
While in LA, he also visited L-Acoustics facility in Westlake Village, where he experienced L-ISA immersive technology and tapped MediaVine to design Blue Marble Sound’s L-Acoustics system. It includes seven compact X8 loudspeakers: three for the LCR array and four for the surround array. Four smaller 5XTs comprise the signature Atmos overhead height array, while a pair of KS21 subwoofers provide the anchor for the 7.1.4 system, all powered by four LA2Xi amplified controllers.
“It was a lengthy process to design and build the studio and to source all of the components, which was made even harder because of the supply-chain issues during COVID, but when I realized the potential for immersive music and the fact that there were so few facilities that were capable of it at the time, I knew it was what I wanted to do,” Kitwadkar explains. “But one thing became clear after we heard the L-ISA demo — the monitoring system had to be L-Acoustics. The quality of the speakers and sound is incomparable and unmatched.
“The X8 and 5XT are coaxial, so they can be mounted very flexibly,” he continues. “That was important early on as we were still finalizing the studio’s acoustical design. Also, the speakers are passive, reducing the cabling and power we’d need. But it was the clarity and sonic neutrality of all the speakers that was so amazing. Once we heard them, we knew that these would be our speakers. After nine months with them, we have found that ear fatigue is extremely rare, even after a full day in the studio.”
MediaVine, working with the L-Acoustics application and sales teams, installed and calibrated Blue Marble Sound’s monitoring system. Kitwadkar and his team then completed the setup using L-Acoustics L-ISA Studio software in conjunction with Dolby’s rendering software. This combination is designed to help ensure the proper management of mix-objects and metadata embedding as well as compatibility with Apple Music and Amazon Spatial Audio.
“What’s great about the 5XTs mounted above is that they have a wider dispersion angle than a lot of other studio monitors, which allows us to have a wider overhead image,” he explains. “The dimensions of the speaker coverage are 19 by 10 feet, and the ceiling speakers are 13 feet from the ground, and those compact height speakers have no problem covering that much space. It does not feel like you lose sound in any part of the room, and the audio remains fully coherent when you walk throughout the space.”
Catalano adds, “Using L-Acoustics speakers and L-ISA Studio software in a recording studio application represents an inflection point in the evolution of immersive audio. The beauty of this system is that it can support both Dolby Atmos and L-Acoustics L-ISA as immersive recording formats. The L-ISA Studio software can run natively on the studio computer, so both formats are instantly accessible.”
He cites LifeGate Denver, the first house of worship in Colorado to install L-ISA technology in a design and install by MediaVine, as a potential future client for the studio as the church creates its own immersive content for its environment. “Once it’s all software-based, any user can mix in any format on any DAW,” he says. “You can really see the future taking shape here.”
Dolby engineer Jonathan Lessner tuned and approved the Atmos studio in October 2022. With projects for Denver-based label Bully Free Music artist Gareth Kelsall and an Atmos up-mixed version of New Orleans band Vivian already completed, Blue Marble Sound is on the way to achieving Kitwadkar’s vision of “using Atmos and L-ISA to ‘lift-up’ the community and myself.” He looks forward to participating in the Dolby Atmos Music Accelerator educational program with his talented team of staff audio engineers, stating: “There are so many possibilities ahead, and Atmos and L-ISA can help get us there.”
