Inside immersive audio with producer Katia Sochaczewska

We were delighted to recently welcome music producer and researcher Katia Sochaczewska into our Dolby Atmos Suite for a two-hour masterclass on immersive composition, orchestral recording, and the research behind them both. Katia holds a PhD on human perception in Ambisonic systems, contributes to Google's Eclipsa Audio ecosystem, and co-founded the ECHO Project, a free educational resource built around an immersive orchestral session at AIR Studios.

Her session was full of practical advice for anyone curious about working in spatial audio. We've pulled out five tips that should be useful whether you're a producer, composer, sound designer or engineer.

What is immersive audio?

Immersive audio, sometimes called spatial or 3D audio, is sound designed to be perceived as coming from any direction around the listener, including above and below. Where stereo gives you left and right, and surround gives you a flat ring of speakers around the room, immersive formats add a height dimension, so sound can be placed and moved through a full sphere. The most familiar format is Dolby Atmos, but there are others, including Sony 360 Reality Audio, Apple Spatial Audio, the Ambisonics format used in much of the academic research, and Google's newer Eclipsa Audio.

Immersive audio is increasingly the format of choice for game soundtracks, blockbuster film scores, and a growing portion of music streaming, which is why it's worth understanding regardless of the discipline you're heading into.

1. Start with one good immersive listen

Katia traced her entire career back to a single moment on her acoustic engineering course, when she heard a multi-channel composition for the first time. "It changed the way I experienced music," she told the room, "and there was no way back."

You can read about immersive audio for months and not really get it until you've sat in front of a properly configured system. Book time in our Dolby Atmos Suite, put on a pair of headphones with a good binaural mix, and listen to something well-produced before you try to make anything yourself. You're training your ears for a format you don't yet have a reference for, and that has to come first.

2. Use free research resources before you spend a penny on a studio

One of the most useful things Katia mentioned was 3D MARCo, a free research database from the University of Huddersfield containing orchestral recordings captured with multiple microphone setups simultaneously. You can mix between the different arrays and hear, directly, how one configuration widens the stereo image while another lifts the height. "You can mix as many different microphones as you want at the same time," she explained, "and see that one setup will result in enhanced width, whereas another will bring me a little bit more elevation."

The same applies to her collaborative ECHO Project, which hosts binaural renders, ADM files, full multitrack stems and detailed mix notes from the engineers who worked on the session. Her advice to students was to experiment with these resources first, because they let you understand microphone arrays, mixing techniques and immersive composition without the pressure of a paid studio booking.

3. Remember that we're poor at hearing height

Humans localise sound on the horizontal plane really well, but are, in Katia's words, "poor with the perception of height." It's an evolutionary quirk as our ears evolved to track threats moving across the ground first, instead of above us.

For anyone working in immersive audio, that means that the height dimension is the hardest one to make convincing, and our ears won't do the work on their own. Good immersive recordings enhance height through careful microphone array design, and great immersive mixes use the height channels deliberately rather than as an afterthought. If something feels flat in your mix it might be the vertical axis.

4. Think about composition, not just capture

The most compositionally useful section of the masterclass was on immersive thinking as a creative approach rather than a technical format. Katia walked through specific techniques you can apply, whatever you're producing.

Use contrast between static and moving elements. A drone or sustained texture creates a backdrop that lets transient hits register more strongly in space, because the brain latches onto movement when there's stillness around it. Move melodies between sections so a theme appears to travel around the listener even when the source isn't moving. And lean into spectral colouration. When sound passes around the listener's head, the head itself acts as an obstacle and changes the timbre.

These principles work as much for electronic and hybrid production as they do for orchestral recording.

5. Ask the question, even when it sounds mad

An ECHO recording session at AIR Studios involved seating the London Contemporary Orchestra in a full circle, an arrangement almost nobody uses. The players took about two minutes to settle into it. "Everyone was enthusiastic and curious," Katia said. "Don't be afraid of asking, okay, can we do this? Is this madness? Yes, it's madness, but we can try."

If you've got an unconventional idea for a recording session, a production approach or a mix technique, ask! Musicians, engineers and collaborators are usually more open to experimenting than you'd assume. The worst that happens is you find out faster.

A huge thank you to Katia for her generosity and for such a wonderful masterclass with our Bristol students.

If you're interested in going further with immersive audio, our courses give you the studios, the kit and the teaching to take it seriously:

• MA Innovation in Sound
• BA (Hons) Music Production and Sound Engineering
• BA (Hons) Music Production and Sound Design