If it weren’t for the Studer D950 digital mixing console and the absence of popcorn kernels on the plush wall-to-wall carpet, you’d swear you had just stepped into some luxurious theatrical screening room.

With 45 stadium-style seats lined up and the ability to project in 35mm and video 3D, Dome Audio Video and Effects has created a new mixing theatre that is as lush as it is cutting edge.

dave recently opened Theatre 1 as its new fully digital multi-format room, one capable of handling 480 channels of audio information. Engineers can output anything from imax to Dolby Digital 5.1 (five audio outputs plus one sub-woofer), down to stereo or mono. The space is currently being used to mix a new imax feature, Galapagos.

The room also makes dave one of only two thx certified mixing facilities in Canada, says James Porteous, dave’s audio-post production manager.

It took six months and $2 million to set up Theatre 1, he says. It was an investment borne of necessity.

‘It’s client driven – it’s end-user driven,’ Porteous says. ‘The movie companies want to get people off their duffs, off the couch and out into the theatres. The way to do that is to give them a sound system and a picture quality that they’re not going to get at home.’

As a facilitator of multi-format mixing, the Toronto-based audio shop is not alone. Across Canada, audio post and audio production houses are setting up equally high-tech, if less extravagant, mixing rooms. In the tight, highly competitive audio post and audio production markets, these are moves driven by an instinct for survival.

‘The industry is evolving so rapidly that we really don’t know what the immediate future holds,’ says Geoff Turner, president and founder, Pinewood Sound in Vancouver. ‘Even two or three weeks from now there could be an announcement and the next thing you know there is yet another new format coming out.’

To combat this, audio shops are looking to invest in mixing boards that are extremely adaptable. Turner likens the current state of the industry to a Rolls-Royce that you can build with a car kit. You can get the best of everything and put it together however you wish.

Pinewood, which recently completed the audio post production for the Leslie Nielsen feature Camouflage, is refurbishing its Lions Gate studio in North Vancouver. The new studio – a 20-minute drive from Pinewood’s downtown facility – will be a state-of-the-art digital mixing theatre that will meet thx specifications and will be capable of mixing in most every format, including 7.1 and imax, Turner says.

The space is due to open in late fall and Turner is now in the process of deciding what equipment to purchase. He estimates the overhaul will cost Pinewood in excess of $1 million.

‘I have a picture in my mind of what I would like to see and hear, and what I feel the future may possibly hold,’ he says. ‘All I’m looking for is to make sure that I have enough switching circuits and changeover-type devices that will allow us to encompass anything that we can foresee.’

One of the factors driving multi-format is the advent of hdtv. Along with enhanced picture capabilities, hdtv also provides eight audio channels, allowing audio post houses to provide a 5.1 mix and a stereo mix at the same time on the same master. This as opposed to traditional video, which provides four channels of audio.

The same is true of dvd, says Porteous. Because dvd has 5.1 capabilities, many mows are remastering audio for dvd distribution. Porteous adds that more and more mows are being mixed off the bat in 5.1 and some networks such as hbo are requesting that all their projects be archived in 5.1.

It is exactly this trend that spurred Toronto’s Casablanca Sound and Picture Services to revamp its Studio 3 into a fully digital multi-format room.

Rerecording mixer Lou Solakofski says Studio 3 is set up specifically to mix for mows. ‘The redesign of our Stage 3 is taking to heart that whole mini-movie-theatre-in-the-home environment. In other words, people are starting to buy big tvs [with] more than just two speakers built in, people are buying the 5.1 packages.’

The room was retrofitted with a digital Harrison Series 12 console at a price tag of $500,000. Casablanca also purchased Akai digital dubbers and a digital video distribution network, which has allowed the shop to eliminate s-vhs in its mixing rooms. The entire upgrade cost Casablanca $2.5 million, Solakofski says.

Solakofski, who is nominated for an Emmy for the mixing he did on Joan of Arc, says Casablanca will likely install Harrison consoles in the facility’s Stages 1 and 2, depending on how well the Stage 3 setup works

Currently Stage 1 is the theatrical room with a custom-made 80-channel multi-format digital Lafont console and Stage 2 is set up for mow mixes with a 64-channel multi-format Lafont analog board. Until last year, Stage 3 was used for straightahead tv episodic mixes, Solakofski says.

There are also plans underway to build an all-digital 100-seat mixing theatre (Stage 4) which will be one of the largest of its kind in Canada.

In choosing their equipment, particularly their consoles, many audio shops have put an emphasis on going digital. While the reasons for these moves vary, industry representatives come back to one advantage in particular.

‘Because it’s digitally controlled, you can actually do a translation check on the fly. In other words, you could be mixing in 5.1 and hit one button and this is the way it will sound in Dolby Surround, just hit another button and this is what it will sound like in tv stereo,’ says Solakofski.

Michael Banton-Jones, the senior engineer at McClear Pathe, says another advantage to digital boards lies in their versatility. Most major manufacturers, he says, are putting digital boards on the market.

‘A digital board makes it so that it can pretty much handle anything coming down the line, whereas with analog boards you were always worried about being shut out in two years, or the next year,’ he says. ‘Digital boards are incredibly versatile.’

Still, at least one shop is refraining from the move to digital. Medallion pfa, which works almost exclusively in long-format productions, has been in the multi-format business for years. Yet, the shop still uses a combination of analog and digital, says head rerecording mixer Mike Baskerville.

Medallion runs two 80-channel Lafont Panoramic 5.1 consoles and one Neve V60 console – all analog.

For Baskerville, it is a question of sound quality. ‘We don’t find that you get exactly the same sound, or as good a sound,’ he says. ‘Some parts of the process still sound better in analog than digital.’

All prep work is done on the digital main because it’s quicker and faster, Baskerville says, and Pro Tools systems reside in the shop’s five edit suites.

Medallion’s technological development arm, Command Advanced Technologies, is developing a monitoring matrix box that will allow mixers to instantly switch formats, much like a digital console, Baskerville says.

Still, despite such holdovers, most shops have embraced the era of digital everything. In dave’s Theatre 1, audio is played back off Tascam MMP16 digital playback units and they use Tascam MMR8 recorders and Sony 3348 digital multitrack tape machines. On the studio floor they also have 48 channels of Pro Tools, the Macintosh-based nonlinear sound editing systems, allowing an entire session to be online at all times.

‘It’s a fully digital signal path literally until it leaves the building,’ Porteous says. ‘Internally, nothing ever touches analog anywhere.’