Deluxe Digital Cinema Installs Barco Auro 11.1 System

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Tue, 08/06/2013 - 11:29 -- Nick Dager

Deluxe Digital Cinema has installed Europe’s first Barco Auro 11.1 multi-channel movie soundtrack creation system at its Deluxe Soho production facility in London.  

“Surround sound is nothing new: we’ve had 10.1 systems for several years and everybody was happy but this new Auro-3D technology provides a new and radically different audio experience for movie fans,” said Kevin Fawcett, technical operations manager (theatres) at Deluxe Digital Cinema “It fills in the audio experience in ways I had not experienced previously and drags you right into the middle of the movie. The first time that I had heard it in our own theatre I was very pleasantly surprised and pleased with what I heard.” 

Deluxe play a critical role in the post-production of movies since they provide mastering services to the major studios. Within a movie mastering workflow quality control (QC) is a critical element since the facility needs to manage and playback a broad diversity of digital files that are encoded into various formats so that they can be checked and approved. The Auro 11.1 theatre at Deluxe Soho provides sophisticated movie soundtrack QC facility currently operating in Europe.

The digital master, also known as the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) is stored on a computer server within the facility and this is where the Auro system resides. From the server, 11.1 channels of audio are streamed to a DataSat AP20 Cinema processor and then distributed to Alcon speakers which Deluxe has installed in its QC theatre: the end result is a totally immersive three dimensional audio experience.

The Auro 11.1 system was installed within Deluxe’s Soho facility immediately before Easter this year. Fawcett reports very high levels of demand for this new Auro 11.1 by Barco channel soundtrack creation system, so much that for several weeks the theatre has been working 24/7.

Within days of its installation, the new Auro 11.1 technology at Deluxe started work creating soundtracks for DreamWorks Animation movie releases, which are distributed in Europe by 20th Century Fox. Deluxe reports that several other major Hollywood studios have requested demonstrations, and as a result of what they experienced they are evaluating plans to adopt the technology themselves.