The audio production studios at Humber Polytechnic are equipped with IsoAcoustics isolators.

 
The Bachelor of Music programme at Humber Polytechnic in Toronto, Canada, is one of the most renowned of its kind. The established Gordon Wragg Recording Studio and the all-new Dolby Atmos studio as well as all student suites are equipped with IsoAcoustics solutions for a number of different monitor speakers, like ATC, Neumann and Dynaudio. Justin Gray – musician, producer, mixing engineer and professor at Humber Polytechnic – provides insight into the programme and the improvements he encountered with the introduction of IsoAcoustics products.

 

Humber Polytechnic: teaching audio to musicians

“The bachelor degree programme is Canada’s premier undergraduate music degree.

It is performance-based, so the musicians come into the programme as performers. For the first couple of years of the degree, they’re focused as artists. But then, in their second year, they’re taking mandatory courses in music production. In their third year, they’re taking a very robust masterclass, where everybody is in the studio and they’re getting comfortable with the technology. And then in our fourth year, every student in the programme produces an EP of their own music. Each student acts as a producer and an artist for each other’s projects. When we’re sending the students out into the world, they’re not only really high-level professional performers, they’re also very confident in the studio environment.”

Humber is forging the future of music

“The vision is two decades old, so quite forward-thinking at the time. Our expectations of the students are not that all of them will become engineers. Some students want to take the opportunity to become more comfortable as session players. Others want to become engineers and start their own studios. In our modern world, every musician is using recording technology, at least as a musical instrument. At the end of the day, pedagogically, this is a fascinating part of education. Are we responsible to create professionals? Are we responsible to facilitate learning opportunities? It’s both, of course.”

 

Immersive audio with great musicians

“The immersive curriculum is new and fresh and evolving. I’m approaching that curriculum not from the perspective of creating Dolby Atmos engineers. I’m actually much more inspired to plant the seed of creativity for the musicians and the composers.

One of the challenges in other courses teaching audio production is having the musicianship that you need to demonstrate techniques. At Humber, I can look at any student in the room and ask them to go play their instrument at a professional level. We don’t take for granted that when we do master class recordings, the band is killing it. The musicians are playing sensitively and dynamically, and some of the recordings that come out of some of the class projects actually get released.”

The Gordon Wragg Recording Studio at Humber

“We have two main studios. The first one is called the Gordon Wragg Recording Studio. This year in September, we transitioned into a brand-new building. They actually built it around the old studio, as we wouldn’t let them tear it down because we liked it too much. The new building features a gorgeous performance hall, completely new facilities for the students in terms of performance labs and classrooms, and more. Also attached to our new performance hall is a new immersive audio control room, a fully decked out 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos suite.”

 

The all-new immersive studio at Humber

“This new Dolby Atmos studio is an absolutely gorgeous space acoustically. It’s totally world-class, from the microphones, DPA and Neumann and Schoeps, to the big SSL Matrix 2, to the ATC speakers, and so on. We can connect to the hall and record from there via Dante, connect to the entire facility. It’s truly a world-class facility, and the ability to have an immersive audio room of that size with that quality of equipment and acoustics connected to now one of Toronto’s finest recording halls is incredible.”

 

A recording studio dream

“The students don’t even have a clue how spoiled they are right now. We are literally going into a world-class hall, recording ensembles with 11-channel Schoeps arrays and DPAs and Neumanns, into the best converters in the world, into a live Dolby Atmos rig in real time. But I’m reminding them. I tell them: even as a professional who does this day in and day out, this is a rarity. Most Dolby Atmos engineers on the planet have not tracked something in immersive. Even if they have, experiencing it on speakers in real time is truly special. We’re talking maybe 10 facilities in the world, most of which are sound stages for film.”

Justin Gray and Dave Dysart from IsoAcoustics have been working together on numerous projects.

Perfect translation with IsoAcoustics

“In that 7.1.4 room, we have decoupled the speakers with IsoAcoustics. I initially approached IsoAcoustics because of Dave Dysart, who I knew from other projects before. He is a Toronto legend. So we tried the IsoAcoustics solutions. At the end of the day, isolation is about accuracy and accuracy is about translation. You know, in terms of translation, there is no better way of testing than putting out thousands of student projects over the years. The IsoAcoustics technology is proving its worth on a daily basis. I feel like the speakers are shining.”

The effect of isolation

“At the end of the day, the imaging stability is probably the biggest benefit. Also, reducing unwanted vibration and resonance is never a bad thing, even if you have only two speakers. But when you take it into a 12-channel room, even if it was subtle with two speakers, you are magnifying the effect by a significant number. We just get better bass localisation and more accurate frequency response from each speaker with the isolation from IsoAcoustics.”

Justin Gray
Justin Gray was one of the first engineers who was working in Dolby Atmos for music specifically. Over the past ten years, he has mixed thousands of songs in the immersive format. In his role as a professor at Humber College, Gray educates his students in all things recording, mixing, and mastering, including immersive recording and immersive composition. He puts a lot of emphasis on the practical aspect of musical education, drawing on his own experience as a touring musician.