The largest art academy in Switzerland, the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK for Zürcher Hochschule der Künste) has a long history of building bridges between artistic disciplines. Outside of traditional staples like film, theatre, and dance, ZHdK also focusses on media production and digital arts. The university has its own conservatory, offering courses for sound engineers with particular emphasis on three-dimensional audio format Dolby Atmos. With the introduction of a new Master’s degree course on sound design, ZHdK recently upgraded their Surround Sound mixing room with a 7.1.4 speaker setup, featuring monitors from PSI Audio.
With multiple editing suites and a stereo control room equipped with monitors from the manufacturer, ZHdK’s freshly installed Dolby Atmos system also features Swiss precision. Revealing every minute detail of an immersive mix, the new mixing room boasts eleven PSI Audio A17-M monitors and a A225-M subwoofer.
A plethora of editing suites at ZHdK had already been equipped with PSI Audio A17-M and A25-M monitors, as well as two 5.1 Surround rooms with A25-M for front monitors and A17-M as satellites. Markus Stürm, AV services support at ZHdK, notes: “We already knew the sound of PSI Audio monitors from the engineers’ control room. I figured they would be suited for this project too, and since the speakers fulfil the Dolby specifications, our choice was clear.”
In order to offer a realistic immersive mix experience to students of the Master’s degree, ZHdK offers a dual-studio concept. One studio is a large mixing stage with 46 speakers (one of very few European studios certified as Motion Picture Mixing Studio by Dolby) and the second studio complements this large-format space with a smaller control room. Featuring a speaker setup of seven surround channels, a subwoofer and four overhead channels, this control room is the home of ZHdK’s new A17-M’s and A225-M subwoofer.
The two systems perfectly complement each other, as sound design student Daniel Eaton explains: “The big Atmos studio has a PA feel to it, you hear exactly how it would sound in a cinema. The smaller room is more into the details. When you make a decent pre-mix on the PSI Audio speakers, you can be sure that you will not hear any mistakes in the big studio either.”
With their fully analogue circuit design, advanced proprietary technologies and outstanding manufacturing quality, PSI Audio monitors guarantee absolute clarity down to the finest details. In addition to this, another factor comes into play when setting up studios for immersive sound: All PSI Audio monitors, from the smallest A14-M to the flagship A25-M, only differ in their maximum level and low range- their sonic signatures remain consistent. For this reason, all models can be combined freely and still provide one coherent, unified sound image. The low end also remains flexible, with both subwoofer models A125-M and A225-M able to be used individually or in combination to provide appropriate low-frequency playback, making it easy to scale a 3D audio system depending on requirements and room size.
