News
- It's a full Dolby Atmos mixing studio... in a shed
- Designed to deliver accurate Atmos audio with pin-sharp precision
- Artists are delighted with the mixes, which required no tweaks
If like me you used to have, or still have, a backyard office or shed for working in, you're going to be green with envy at the sight of mixing maestro Kurt Martinez's personal Dolby Atmos studio.
The award-nominated Atmos expert designed and built his own backyard office and filled it with enviable gear, and if he doesn't call it his Spatial shed I'm going to be very disappointed.
Martinez has been nominated for the prestigious Music Producers Guild award as Atmos Engineer of the Year, and he spent three years as the Head Dolby Atmos Mix Engineer at the world-famous Dean Street studios. He's worked on live and recorded music by a host of stars including Kylie Minogue, Def Leppard, Soft Play, Billy Idol and Duran Duran.
Like many freelancers, Martinez figured that having a home office was a much better idea than a long commute into the city, and in Martinez's case that decision was compounded by being a new dad. So he built an entire Atmos mixing studio in his back garden, doing everything himself apart from the electrics and internet connectivity.
(Image credit: Kurt Martinez)How to make a spatial shedAs Mixonline reports, Martinez built the 2.5m x 3.5m garden office with a combination of porous timber walls to absorb the low frequencies, acoustic panelling in the ceiling and sides, a large rear bookshelf for dispersion, and acoustic slat panels at the front. There's thick acoustic underlay below the laminate floor and even the furniture has a function: the armchairs and rug are there to absorb audio reflections.
With the building ready, the next step was to add the tech. Martinez uses a Pro Tools system based around an Audient ORIA, which sends audio to a Ginger Audio Ground Control Sphere that's controlled by an Elgato Stream Deck+.
The speakers are striking. They're PMC6-2 left and right monitors, a PMC6 center speaker, an 8 Sub LFE, and Ci30 height and surround monitors. Final mixes are tested on AirPods Max and a Sonos home theater setup to check that still sounds good on consumer Atmos hardware as well a studio-level setup.
I used to have a very similar-looking setup for my own home studio, but sadly I didn't have Martinez's high-end gear or even more importantly, Martinez's ears, which is why nobody's nominating me for anything.
But I do love to see a good audio project, and it's clearly been very successful: according to ETNow.com Martinez's last five full-length records, which he mixed in that studio, required no tweaking at all when he tested them in large commercial studios.
All five of those records have been signed off by their delighted artists. I'd like to think that one of them was Shed Seven.
- ChatGPT and Google Gemini have overtaken popular social media sites for discovering new products
- 55% of UK shoppers have made a purchase based on AI-powered product recommendations
- Privacy and advanced features like visual search could be holding back wider adoption
New research has claimed that while AI is helping people to shop, the technology is yet to contribute to any noticeable increases in revenue.
Figures from Vercel and the World Retail Congress found 20% of UK consumers use AI search platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini over social media to kick off their retail discovery, with Facebook on 19%, TikTok on 18%, and Instagram with just 14%.
Meanwhile, 87% of UK shoppers find AI recommendations useful, but only 55% have made a purchase following an AI recommendation.
AI shopping assistantsWhile AI recommendations and price comparisons are considered useful, retailers are yet to see any increase in buying. This could be due to trust or privacy issues, with only 10% of shoppers admitting that they would spend more time with an AI shopping assistant than a human fulfilling the same role, a figure that is repeated across Europe.
In the UK, while AI is being increasingly adopted by storefronts, it is still some way from wider adoption as a replacement. 79% prefer to open a retailer’s website to start online shopping, and for high value purchases, 65% still prefer to pay a visit to the retailer’s bricks-and-mortar location and see the goods for themselves before parting with their cash.
Some of the resistance can be attributed to trust and privacy issues. The report found a third (33%) of UK customers are concerned that AI doesn’t show them the best products, perhaps because they are inaccurate, or worse – influenced by manufacturers or some other promotional tool.
The challenge to retailers"For most of the web's history, we optimized storefronts for two audiences: people and Google," said Malte Ubl, CTO at Vercel.
"There's now a third: AI agents that discover, compare, and increasingly recommend products on a shopper's behalf. The retailers who win the next decade will be the ones who can iterate and ship quickly enough to keep up with how fast this consumer behavior is moving."
But challenges exist. While 43% are likely to prefer one retailer over another due to a superior AI-powered experience, privacy concerns and features like visual search need to be addressed.