A new audio room has been unveiled in the Arts West facility at Elon University, built from the ground up for research as well as audio experimentation. Designed specifically around the Dolby Atmos format, the new space was envisioned as as an immersive audio playground for students and researchers alike. Associate Professor of Music Todd Coleman explains that such a space was sorely needed on Elon’s campus.
“The music department had no dedicated listening environment that was like a classroom-sized space of high quality,” says Coleman. “We have the built-in generic AV stereo speaker set up in our classrooms and computer lab, but those rooms cannot play back audio beyond two-channel stereo recordings, and the rooms are not acoustically treated for detailed and nuanced listening, whether in stereo or surround formats.”
Plans for the audio room had been evolving over the last ten years. Eventually, Elon opened a new Dolby Atmos mixing studio, but that space was designed only for mixing and mastering, and wasn’t suitable for the type of work envisioned for the grand audio room. The new room features a 7.1.4 Atmos setup, including a subwoofer, four height speakers, and seven ear-level speakers for a truly immersive audio environment.
“You can make it sound like it’s behind you to the right, behind you to the left, anywhere up or down,” says Coleman. “It is not just sound that surrounds, it is sound that you inhabit – sound that moves around you, above you, through you, even in you.”
