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SOUND.COM SCORES THE AUDIO IN SURROUND FOR FILM & LIVE SOUND @ YASH RAJ STUDIOS

SOUND.COM were thrilled to get a call from Big Events to implement 5.1 surround sound for the music release of the film RAAVAN. This was no regular hotel ballroom launch as Yash Raj Studios was the venue for this prestigious release that had Ashwariya Rai Bachan hosting, Abhishek Bachan performing, AR Rahman scoring, Gulzar narrating and Mani Ratnam directing the show along with Shad Ali was a huge honour for SOUND.COM, to work with Mani Ratnam and his team.

Even before the event, as much as our founder Warren D’souza has worked and studied on 5.1 surround systems and pioneered its use in live sound applications in the country, called upon his colleagues from film mixing industry & home theatre engineers who have closely worked on 5.1 systems, for their vital tips on proper deployment of the surround rigs for the music release. After all the guru himself Mani Ratnam himself was directing the show from the console and was involved in every step of the way to ensure the release was a visual & sonic success. We had to be really sure about what we were doing

AR Rahman came up with a unique idea of having orchestration along with drums for the live segments of the show and thinking about what he had in mind the genius wanted to create the emotion from the orchestra and the jungle beats from the rhythm of the drums and percussion. We produced a live mix that had the orchestration & drums spatially placed all across the surround speakers and AR’s voice from the centre cluster & panned vocals, drums & orchestra in left, right clusters. The film surround content came from Qube servers whose audio outputs were sent to SOUND.COM’s console that were routed to the various loudspeakers. The biggest challenge was to implement the live surround and film surround without changing the buss structure of the console and still have the power to get any musical source and send it to any speaker in the room, That was the key to a very successful 5.1 audio deployment

SOUND.COM crew consisting of Yash Panchal and Yasin Shaikh did a commendable job in setting up the LCR clusters hung high up on the shooting floor firing straight into the audiences. They also deployed a total of 16 surround clusters around the audiences on special stands. While Sunil Karanjikar and KJ Singh mixed AR Rahman & his ensemble of musicians, Warren D’souza took care of the systems engineering, surround deployment & alignment. The entire Yash Raj Studio had SOUND.COM’s signature speakers all over the place no matter where your head panned too.

Just getting a pat in our back from everyone at Madras Talkies and appreciation for our contribution and work from Big Events is all that we need @ SOUND.COM commented Warren D’souza. Teamwork is very important on events. Gilroy Valladares attended all the event meetings, Yash & Yasin executed all the groundwork, Warren aligned the system, Sunil mixed the show & the entire SOUND.COM team got the credit. I am very proud of the Jedi Knights of SOUND.COM as they managed to pull of such a great event even though we were busy with IPL Awards with AR Rahman performing there too, it was a busy weekend with AR Rahman, Awards, Launches & endless hours of rehearsals. Also not forgetting the many other productions the rest of our team were executing in and around those days.