USER STORY
keeps immersive projects moving beyond the Atmos room
Located in a light-filled penthouse in central Madrid, Mapa Studios is home to more than 400 square metres of recording, production and mixing space, including a certified Dolby Atmos room.
With seven rooms, a large terrace, a shared kitchen and a steady flow of artists from across Spain, Latin America and beyond, it is designed to feel more like a creative home. Sessions spill into shared spaces, and encounters between artists from completely different musical worlds form an important part of the studio’s character.
As Mapa’s immersive workload has increased, the challenge has therefore been not only to work more efficiently, but to preserve a clear line of communication between the studio, its engineers and the artists they serve.
SR1 has become part of that process, enabling significant stages of immersive production to take place without requiring continuous access to Mapa’s main Dolby Atmos room.
Removing the Atmos room bottleneck
Mapa handles a broad range of immersive projects. At one recent peak, three engineers at Mapa completed around 200 Atmos mixes in a month.
That volume of work involves much more than final mixing. Before a project reaches the main Atmos room, sessions need to be organised, templates created, stems positioned and stereo references matched against the immersive version.
The main room, however, is also required for recording sessions, attended mixes and other work that depends on its physical monitoring system. Using it for every stage of every Atmos project would quickly create a bottleneck.
Before adopting SR1, assistants could begin preparing sessions in one of Mapa’s smaller rooms using conventional headphones and binaural monitoring. Their decisions would then need to be checked and refined once the main room became available.
SR1 gives the team a dependable multichannel reference during those early stages. Assistants can prepare templates, begin positioning elements and carry out pre-mixing work elsewhere in the facility while the Atmos room remains in use for another session.
I COULD BE MIXING IN THE MAIN STUDIO WHILE THE TEAM PREPARED SESSIONS WITH SR1 SOMEWHERE ELSE, AND I KNEW WHAT THEY WERE HEARING AND WHAT THEY WERE DOING.
The speaker room remains essential for critical decisions and final verification. SR1 does not replace it. Instead, it reduces the amount of time each project needs to spend there.
So the main room stays available for the sessions that genuinely require it, while immersive projects can continue progressing elsewhere in the building.
That might mean working from one of Mapa’s smaller production spaces or taking a laptop and SR1 onto the terrace — something that would normally be out of reach on an immersive project, where work is usually tied to the calibrated room. With SR1, the environment changes, but the reference doesn’t, and the project does not have to stop.
MIXING IS A PURELY CREATIVE PROCESS THAT FEEDS OFF THE ENVIRONMENT.
Taking the uncertainty out of remote artist approval
The same principle applies once a mix is ready for artist review.
Mapa’s preferred approach is always to bring artists into the Atmos room. Listening together gives the artist the full speaker-based experience and makes it easier to discuss the mix in the environment where it was created.
But in practice, that’s not always possible. Artists may be travelling, working in another country or unable to visit the studio within the project schedule.
The usual alternative is to send a binaural render. This is an important version to check because headphones are how much of the audience will ultimately experience an Atmos release. But it also leaves the studio with little control over how the artist listens.
WITH BINAURAL, I HAVE TO TELL THE ARTIST: ‘DON’T PLAY IT THROUGH SPEAKERS. DON’T PLAY IT ON YOUR PHONE.’ FOR ARTIST APPROVAL, IT’S NOT A RELIABLE REFERENCE.
Not every artist fully understands the relationship between the Atmos master, the binaural render and the different playback formats through which the music may eventually be heard. Without control over the artist’s playback setup, the studio cannot be certain what they are responding to.
That can make feedback difficult to interpret. A request for more bass, a louder vocal or a change in spatial positioning may reflect the playback setup as much as the mix itself.
Mapa therefore began testing another approach: sending artists an SR1 alongside a prepared Pro Tools session, giving them direct access to the multichannel mix outside the studio.
Before using the system for artist review, the team repeatedly compared projects between SR1 and Mapa’s Atmos room, confirming that decisions translated reliably between the two.
WHEN I SEND THE SESSION AND THE SR1, I KNOW THE ARTIST IS LISTENING TO WHAT I WANT THEM TO HEAR, NOT SOMETHING ELSE.
Çantamarta’s album La esquina + violenta was the first project on which Mapa tested SR1 as a tool for gathering artist feedback. The system has also been used for pre-mixing and session templating on Rafa Pabón’s WOW, final studio checks on Fillas de Cassandra’s TERTÚLIA, and immersive work for projects by Sech and Ednita Nazario.
Giving engineers and artists the same point of reference
SR1 ensures both the studio and the artist are responding to the same mix through the same reference, even when they cannot be in the same room. So if an artist asks for a change, that feedback can be evaluated with confidence in the listening conditions behind it.
Technology, formats and monitoring systems all have an important role to play, but only if they help strengthen the relationship between the engineer and the artist.
By extending a trusted immersive reference beyond the Atmos room, SR1 helps Mapa Studios preserve that connection throughout the production process.
WE’RE MAKING MUSIC. WE’RE NOT MAKING CARS, PENS OR COMPUTERS. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS GOOD COMMUNICATION WITH THE ARTIST.
From session preparation and pre-mixing to final checks and remote artist approval, more of the immersive workflow can continue without waiting for access to the main room. Projects move faster, studio capacity is used more effectively, and everyone involved — from engineer to artist — is speaking the same language.
SR1 GIVES US A COMMON LANGUAGE.
WE KNOW THAT WE ARE LISTENING TO THE SAME THING.
written in collaboration with
Daniel Alanís
Studio Manager | Mapa Studios