Audio Education 2024, Pt. 3: Full Sail University

Don’t pass up Part 1 and Part 2!

In September, Florida’s Full Sail University opened what it says is one of the largest Dolby Atmos-enabled classroom facilities on a university campus. To celebrate, award-winning industry legend Bob Clearmountain hosted two educational sessions in the space for students within the Recording Arts, Audio Production and Music Production programs.

There is a curiosity among consumers as well as entertainment industry professionals regarding immersive audio, says Brandon Egerton, education director, Audio Arts. “We’ve taken our time to understand the technology and how the industry intends to integrate it— even using active industry projects to immerse ourselves in the learning process. This classroom is the perfect complement to the plethora of existing real-world learning environments that allow our students to climb into the cockpit and experience industry-utilized technology firsthand.”

Full Sail has long been on the leading edge of tech, the better to prepare students for real-world opportunities. With this new classroom, Egerton says, “The benefit to our students is multi-fold. Not only can they experience music and audio in a new way, but they also learn how to implement this technology into production workflows and understand the deliverable requirements of companies, labels and DSPs. We believe this will lead to a competitive advantage for them in their career-building process.”

The new Dolby Atmos room features three Avid S6 consoles, together with Avid MTRXII and Sync X units, plus Martin Audio CDD, C8.1T and SX series speakers driven by Linear Research Dante-enabled amps. Full Sail’s inhouse design and technical integration team worked with Dolby on speaker placement and Dolby visited the school to verify and calibrate the system.

Full Sail Goes Big On SSL Desks

“We chose Martin Audio speakers for their asymmetrical dispersion pattern, which delivers even sound coverage throughout the classroom— essential for demonstrating Dolby Atmos in a large space,” explains Michael Orlowski, Director of Technical Services. “Our goal was to use a high-quality installation-class speaker system that provided excellent coverage and integrated well with our existing drop-ceiling.”

“The speakers are highly phase-coherent, and when paired with Linear Research amplifiers’ dedicated DSP, they make it easy to adjust the system response to meet the Dolby Curve,” he continues. “Utilizing the onboard DSP keeps the room correction EQ separate from the classroom demonstration software, DADman, preventing any accidental changes. This thoughtful setup ensures consistent sound quality during lessons while maintaining user-friendly control.” The room’s Dante audio network sits on its own VLAN but can connect to other facilities on-campus.

“It is our mission to provide students with innovative education that prepares them for careers in the entertainment and media industries,” Egerton concludes. “Being on the leading edge of working with this technology is an important part of accomplishing that.”

COME BACK TOMORROW FOR THE CONCLUSION WITH PARTS 4-6