First Immersive Game Studio Opens in Italy

Milan, Italy(August 6, 2024)—Molok Studios in Milan, has become the first Dolby Atmos gaming studio in Italy with the launch of two 7.1.4 rooms.

“We knew Atmos was going to be released and made available on PS5 and consoles, and we thought, ‘no one is taking advantage of this, so let’s make it happen!’” explains Andrea De Cunto, CEO of Molok, a multilingual game, movie and digital localization and post-production company

The newly built studio complex comprises six recording rooms and the two immersive control rooms, Scorpion and Sub Zero, which take their names from Mortal Kombat characters and have an identical Atmos design, but with inverted color schemes.

Chief audio engineer Samuele Daccò spearheaded the project. “Genelec was our first choice when we designed the rooms and we just needed to choose the models—and think about what would sound better for us and our needs,” he explains. “The translation works perfectly in our rooms.”

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For their new control rooms, Molok turned to a 7.1.4 Genelec Smart Active Monitoring solution. Both Scorpion and Sub Zero feature three coaxial three-way 8351s in the LCR positions, with 8340 two-ways deployed for the surround and height channels and a 7380 subwoofer to handle the low frequencies. Cecilia Torracchi, acoustic and civil engineer and partner at Studio Sound Service, worked closely with Molok on the design of the studios.

“It’s so cool to work with Atmos, and by integrating Genelec, it creates a whole new world for us,” Daccò says. “The end user’s game experience can be similar to our mixing room—with different playback levels—but the immersive level of the mixing has changed everything for us.”

Genelec monitors have been a mainstay in Molok’s audio production, starting with the ultra-compact 8010 nearfield model. “I first encountered Genelec monitors when I started engineering in 2018, and in a lot of studios I’ve worked in, there’s usually the 8010,” Daccò notes. “They’re very popular in Italy; it’s hard not to spot them!”

“We’ve had brilliant vertical growth in the last few years and we only see that increasing, as we start to really utilize Dolby and see its full capability,” De Cunto states. “Thanks to the new studios, it feels like we’re at the right place, at the right time.”