Sumo Digital Expands Sheffield Audio Facilities

While most of the United Kingdom has been in lockdown, Sumo Digital has been expanding its audio facilities. It’s built three 5.1 surround sound edit suites, a Dolby Atmos mix room and a foley/ADR space at its facility in Sheffield.

Part of Sumo Group plc, Sumo Digital is a games developer with eight studios throughout the U.K. It also has facilities in Pune, India. Its portfolio of games feature titles for major publishers, including Microsoft, Sega and Sony. Since its formation 17 years ago, it has worked on many major franchises such as Sonic The Hedgehog, LittleBigPlanet, Forza, Hitman and Doctor Who.

Sumo Digital has audio facilities at four of its U.K. sites but with an ever-increasing workload, the directors felt it was time to invest in state-of-the-art facilities in Sheffield. Acousticians White Mark Ltd. were given the task of designing the new studios, while the build and fit out was handled by principal contractor Confetti Media Group under the direction of Joe Duckhouse and Greg Marshall.

As part of the upgrade Sumo chose monitoring gear from PMC. The three edit rooms now have PMC Twotwo.6 monitors for left center and right channels, Twotwo.5 surround monitors and a Sub2 for the low grequency rffects channel. The new mix room, built to Dolby’s Atmos standard, has PMC IB1S monitors for the LCR channels, Wafer2 monitors for the surrounds, Wafer 1 for the height channels and two Sub2s for LFE.

“Dolby Atmos designed the main mix room for home theater specifications, paying particular attention to the workflow in audio for games,” Joe Duckhouse explains.

“As most of our games can be played back on a variety of systems, we usually create switchable (in game) mixes for stereo, headphones, 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos. As audio professionals, the majority of our team’s day to day involves the use of headphones, especially when we need to work in close proximity to the wider development team,” adds Pat Phelan, Sumo Digital’s audio director.