Sony Pictures Installs Harrison MPC5/Xrange Film Console System

December 10th, 2013 by David Weiss

Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, CA, has just made a major upgrade.

Now onsite is a new Harrison MPC5/Xrange film console system with MC² – 64 wide monitoring and Object++ 3D panning software. The board – and the major horsepower it hosts – will support wide-format and object-based immersive sound formats such as Dolby Atmos and Auro3D at the studio.

Harrison’s new MPC5/Xrange system is ready for a Hollywood feature, providing 1,230 channels of DSP processing to accommodate the wide variety of specific processing requirements for immersive sound feature-film mixing.

The Harrison MPC5 has just been selected for Sony Pictures Studios.

According to Harrison, the new MPC5/Xrange provides the latest “MC² – 64 Wide Monitoring Matrix” and “Object++” 3D panning system, which can treat the incoming channels as “objects” placed in a virtual space. In other words, using Harrison’s patented ESP waveform technology, objects appear and disappear along with the regions on the DAW screen, which allows mixers to anticipate sounds and see their placements in the room.

The board sounds like a directionality dream: Advanced new panning features on the Harrison MPC5/Xrange System include direct Ethernet control of the Dolby Atmos RMU, as well as various wide-format panning modes that include multiple levels of height. The MPC5/Xrange system also consolidates the capabilities of multiple mix formats, and puts them under the user’s hand via motorized joysticks.

“Instead of using a different workflow involving a mix of Atmos, Auro3D, and ProTools panning plugins, we prefer a single workflow that generates multiple mix formats using a consistent framework,” explained Paul Massey, Sound Director and re-recording mixer at Sony Pictures. “The console software will handle the details, so we can focus on the artistic effects we are trying to achieve. This is going to allow us to work more efficiently while maintaining the consistency of creative decisions made in the original mix throughout all formats.”

In addition, the Sony Pictures facility will continue to use the recently installed MPC4D large format control surface with the new MPC5/Xrange system, and latest IKIS automation software.