EXPLORING THE
CINEMATIC
HEMISPHERE FOR
ORCHESTRA
A Collaborative Research Project on 3D Microphone Array Techniques for Orchestral Recording
Lyndhurst Hall, AIR Studios, London
December 17th 2024
We Aim To
- Advance immersive sound recording techniques for orchestral music.
- Bridge the gap between academia and the audio industry.
- Share expert knowledge and high-quality immersive recording resources to support education and research.
- Study perceptual differences across various recording techniques.
- Inspire current and future sound engineers, composers and researchers to explore immersive audio.
We Plan To
- Form a focus group of leading engineers and researchers specialising in immersive orchestral recording.
- Compose an orchestral piece that incorporates a variety of musical styles, instrumentations, dynamics, and textures.
- Record the piece simultaneously with different immersive arrays designed by the expert engineers at Lyndhurst Hall, AIR Studios in London.
- Hold a listening and discussion session at the Dolby Soho screening room, involving both the focus group and additional participants.
- Create an open-access database of the recordings to share with the public.
- Publish the project outcomes in the AES Journal.
- Present the outcomes with demonstrations at future events.
Organisers
Prof. Hyunkook Lee
APL, University of Huddersfield
Dr. Katia Sochaczewska
AGH University of Science and Technology
Nick Wollage
AIR Studios
Focus Group
Kellogg Boynton, a Grammy-nominated recording engineer and score mixer, is the Lead Engineer for the PlayStation Studios Music Team in Los Angeles. Kellogg honed his expertise in music production and engineering at the prestigious Berklee College of Music and Ex’pression College for Digital Arts. With a portfolio that includes high-profile projects like God of War Ragnarök, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and Demon’s Souls, Kellogg’s work is known for its impeccable sound quality and immersive impact. With nearly 20 years of experience in the music industry, his commitment to excellence and innovative approach continue to enhance the auditory experiences of some of the most highly acclaimed scores for games.
Anthony Caruso is the Principal Audio Engineer for PlayStation Studios’ Music Team. For thirteen years he has contributed engineering and mixing, production, supervision, and composition work to more than sixty titles, including some of PlayStation’s most popular series like The Last of Us and Marvel’s Spider Man. His interest in immersive audio began 10 years ago as an early tester of technology that would eventually become PlayStation’s Tempest 3D audio system. Since then, he has experimented with recording and mixing approaches that further enhance the immersive experiences found in the interactive scores of the gaming world.
Dr Hyunkook Lee is Professor of Audio and Psychoacoustic Engineering and Director of the Applied Psychoacoustics Lab (APL) at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He is also a Tonmeister specialising in immersive spatial recording. Hyunkook is an expert in spatial audio psychoacoustics, the recording and reproduction of immersive audio, perceptually motivated virtual acoustic rendering for binaural audio and XR applications. He has developed a number of 3D microphone arrays such as PCMA-3D, ESMA-3D and Lee-Rec 3D. His research provided a theoretical basis for the development of Schoeps’ award-winning ORTF-3D microphone array. He is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), an Associate Technical Editor for AES Journal and Vice President of the AES Technical Committee on High-Resolution Audio.
Morten Lindberg is a Recording Producer and Balance Engineer with 46 American GRAMMY-nominations, 38 of these in craft categories Best Engineered Album, Best Surround Sound Album, Best Immersive Audio Album and Producer of the Year. He is the founder and CEO of the record label 2L. As an early adopter of Auro-3D he developed the 2L-cube microphone array. The technique was later adopted as the 2L-prism towards Dolby Atmos environments. “The beauty of the recording arts is that there is no fixed formula and no blueprint. It all comes out of the music. Every project starts out by digging into the score and talking with the composer and the musicians. It is not necessarily our task as producers and engineers to try to re-create a concert situation with all its commercial limitations. On the contrary; we could make the ideal out of the recording medium and create the strongest illusion, the sonic experience that emotionally moves the listener to a better place”.
Simon Ratcliffe is a score mixer and producer, film co-producer, and MD of the multi-national Sound & Motion Studios which he founded in 2002. A music and film background led to his specialisation in game, streaming and film score mixing and supervision with clients including Arenanet, Disney, Netflix and Amazon Prime, and he has won over two dozen industry accolades with his team such as Songlines World Music, Global Music, Emmy Primetime and FrightNight awards. With a 14 year background in education and a focus on Dolby Atmos, he has given workshops on immersive mixing and film score production at the AES Immersive Conference, Huddersfield University APL, ACM, Metropolis and UCL London, and has a practice-based masters degree from Hertfordshire University.
Dr. Katia Sochaczewska is a producer of immersive music and researcher specializing in spatial audio technologies. She completed her PhD from AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, Poland, focusing on the perception of localization in Ambisonic technology. Her expertise includes music production and mixing in formats such as Dolby Atmos and Ambisonics. Beyond production, Katia is dedicated to sharing her knowledge through teaching, organizing workshops, and hosting events to help composers, music producers and engineers explore immersive production techniques. Katia’s latest credits: Nosferatu – Soundtrack, Robin Carolan, Dolby Atmos mix
Known for his work with Peter Jackson and Howard Shore on the Lord of the Rings films, Mark Willsher is equally at home as a scoring engineer, mixer, and supervising music editor. His work spans feature films to classical, folk, and hip-hop records. Recent projects include New Line Cinema’s Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, Netflix’s animated feature Ultraman Rising, and the San Francisco Symphony’s 2025 Grammy nominated recordings of Stravinsky’s The Firebird (1910), and Kaija Saariaho’s Opera Adriana Mater.
Nick began working as a recording and mixing engineer in the early 1990s after graduating from the University of Surrey’s Tonmeister degree course. He joined AIR Studios in 1996 and it was soon after this that he began his long association with film and game music. Since then he has recorded and mixed more than 500 film scores, including Chicken Run, Shrek, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, the How To Train Your Dragon trilogy and Phantom Thread. Recent projects include: Wicked, Maestro, Saltburn, Northman, The Wild Robot, Paddington 3 and Nosferatu. Games titles include the Batman Arkham series, Genshin Impact, Spider-Man 2, God of War: Ragnarok and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Musicians
Volker Bertelmann is an internationally acclaimed pianist, composer and experimental musician. In 2023 he won a BAFTA and Oscar in the Best Original Score category for All Quiet on the Western Front. His score for Lion, which he composed in collaboration with Dustin O’Halloran was nominated for multiple awards, including an Oscar for Best Original Score, Golden Globe for Best Original Score, and Best Film Music at the BAFTAs. He has provided music for several leading films and television series, including the score for Patrick Melrose, The Old Guard, Stowaway, the episode “Red Book” from Black Mirror, and the 2020 film Ammonite, co-composed with O’Halloran. In 2022, he scored War Sailor, an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival. He returned to TIFF in 2023 with One Life. Bertelmann’s latest projects include Conclave for which he collaborated with director Edward Berger again and has already garnered critical acclaim at the Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals, positioning it as a strong contender in the awards race. In addition he is scoring the highly anticipated prequel series Dune: Prophecy (HBO Max), the Peacock series The Day of the Jackal, and the documentary Hollywoodgate. A uniquely innovative pianist, who in his solo work goes by the name Hauschka, Bertelmann has worked with, among others, the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, where he was the artist in residence, and the Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn. Bertelmann is an active member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Hugh Brunt
Conductor
Hugh Brunt is co-Artistic Director and co-Principal Conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra. He regularly works as a conductor/orchestrator with some of the leading and most innovative voices in film scoring, including Jonny Greenwood, Nicholas Britell, Mica Levi, Anthony Willis, Bryce Dessner, Isabella Summers, Thom Yorke, Matthew Herbert, Son Lux, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Rob Simonsen, Jerskin Fendrix, and Volker Bertelmann.
London Contemporary Orchestra is a leading global orchestral group focused on playing, commissioning and developing new music and artistic output. Alongside working with well-known artists, LCO focuses on developing a diverse next generation of players, conductors and composers by creating opportunities for them to work at the highest professional level. Formed in 2008 by co-artistic Directors Robert Ames and Hugh Brunt, the LCO has collaborated with a wide array of musicians, artists, creative figures, platforms and venues including Radiohead, Frank Ocean, Jonny Greenwood, Steve Reich, Actress, Terry Riley, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Thom Yorke, Mica Levi, Philip Glass, The Smile, William Basinski, Sigur Rós, Volker Bertelmann, Secret Cinema, Vivienne Westwood, Nike, Bill Morrison, Conrad Shawcross, Ron Arad, Hannah Perry, NTS, Boiler Room, DAZED, Resident Advisor, Meltdown Festival, Barbican, Southbank Centre, Roundhouse, Printworks, Tate Modern and BBC Proms.
Partners
Special thanks to our industry and academic sponsors. This project would have not been realised without their generous financial contributions and in-kind support.
