In this series of interviews, Source-Elements Academy shares helpful insights from Source-Connect Certified engineers and studios.
Innenhofstudios is Vienna’s first Dolby Atmos Home certified recording studio and offer everything you need for a first class audio production: Casting and finding of voiceover talents, voice recording, voiceover directing, music licensing, composition, sound design, sound editing, ADR, sound mixing from stereo to Dolby Atmos, picture synced remote recordings up to 7.1, spatial audio (Immersive Audio, 3D Audio for Cinematic VR).
What makes your studio a great studio?
We are a full service recording studio that is located in the heart of Vienna / Austria. We work for major national and international clients in the fields of film, advertising, B2B audio and, as Austrias first Dolby Atmos certified music studio we are also doing a lot of immersive audio.
From day one our philosophy was “quality first”. For us this includes the technical side and the tools we are working with as well as our personal skills. We care a lot that our employees and suppliers get the respect and validation that they deserve for their work while encouraging everyone to keep getting better at what they do on a daily basis. This has created a fantastic environment and makes our studio a place to feel at home both personally and professionally.
We are always open to find and use the best tools we can get our hands on, steadily perfect our workflows and become the best team in the industry. Reliability, openness for critique, and walking the talk are critical for this. It is not an easy task but it surely pays off in the long run.
“Source-Connect Certification is a great way of saying; ‘We know what we’re doing’”
What made you decide to get your studio and engineer/s Source-Connect Certified?
The audio post production market is a very competitive environment. Hobbyists, semi professionals and professionals with years of experience are pitching for the same jobs. Thus more and more clients are having a hard time distinguishing those who really know their trade from those who just think they do. In the light of this development the Source-Connect Certification is a great way of saying “We know what we’re doing and are also providing the required infrastructure to make things work as they should.”
What is your favourite thing about working remotely?
My favourite thing is that you have access to excellent talent from all around the world and being able to work with them as if they were in your recording booth. Also it is always a pleasure connecting with pros from all around the world and getting to know them a bit when chatting before and after sessions.
Innenhofstudios (c) Gregor Hofbauer
What challenges have you faced when working remotely?
Just one word: bandwidth. Once we were doing on a major remote mixing session in 5.1 synced to picture on a Friday afternoon. When everybody around you gets home from work and starts their favourite streaming service, bandwidth might become a problem. After that we invested in the highest bandwidth package our internet provider could provide.
Tell us more about your studio from a technical perspective, for example what hardware and software you use in addition to Source-Connect?
We are using ProTools HDX in all our studios. As speakers we are using Genelecs for the Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 room and Neumanns KH120 for the rest. Concerning plugins we do rely a lot on ProTools stock plugins and on the other hand on very specific plugins when it comes to Post Production for cinema or TV. For Dolby Atmos music mixing sessions we rely heavily on WAVES and the Plugin Alliance Mega bundle. Concerning Mics we mainly use Neumann, Sennheiser or other Premium Manufacturers in combination with our PreAmps from Focusrite, Millennia and Groove Tubes.
How does your studio usually incorporate Source-Connect into your workflow?
We use it mainly for voiceover recordings with Talents from all over the world. It just works great. Get the SC ID from the partner studio, connect and start working. Perfect in combination with Q-Manager. Also with RTS we have very good experiences, especially with short form content where many alterations have to be recorded in one session.
(c) Gregor Hofbauer
What is the number one recommendation you have for other engineers who are new to Source-Connect?
You should give it a try. There are countless browser based alternatives but once you experienced the luxury of not having to deal with audio dropouts you will stick to it.
What are the additional skills that you think engineers need to work remotely?
I think a good understanding of networks and your network structure in general helps a lot. Especially knowing about your company’s firewall and port forwarding settings. Also good communication skills are preferable, as there is the lack of face-to-face communication.
“I think a good understanding of networks and your network structure in general helps a lot”
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
Investing in quality might seem a bit odd when there is a lot of cheap alternatives around. But always be aware that it helps you a lot to be working with great tools. They don’t just work reliably but have also been designed by people who know their trade. This way you can also learn a lot about getting your workflow right by just using them the way they are supposed to be used.
“It helps you a lot to be working with great tools.”
(c) Gregor Hofbauer
More info at:
Innenhofstudios
https://innenhofstudios.at/en/
