From childhood experiments on a Commodore 64 to Grammy-nominated immersive mixes for metal legends, Mark Gittins has built a career on pushing audio boundaries. After years touring as a front-of-house engineer, 15 years running Birmingham’s Megatone recording studio, and working as an outside broadcast engineer for the Premier League, the Commonwealth Games and UEFA Champions League, Mark founded Sensound, a purpose-built Atmos facility in the Midlands, UK, that has become a destination for artists seeking to translate their stereo vision into compelling spatial experiences.
When Apple Music announced Atmos streaming support, Mark saw an opportunity. “I found it quite compelling when done well, absolutely horrifying when done badly,” he recalls. Working with Dolby and partnering with Make Noise Pro Audio‘s Sam Pemberton, he transformed a detached garage into a meticulously calibrated 9.1.4 immersive mixing environment. The gamble paid off when legendary producer Andy Sneap brought him two of metal’s most ambitious projects: Judas Priest’s “Invincible Shield” and Dream Theater’s “Parasomnia”.
We spoke with Mark about these landmark projects, his innovative approach to immersive metal mixing, and why Seventh Heaven Professional has become the cornerstone of his spatial workflow. Utilising the reverb plugin’s detailed early reflections, Mark employs Seventh Heaven as a “spatialiser” that creates depth and space without adding reverb.
Mark Gittins’ Atmos mix room at Sensound sports a Neumann KH series 9.1.4 speaker setup.
The Challenge of Immersive Metal Mixing
Q) You’ve worked on some incredible metal projects recently. How did the Judas Priest collaboration with Andy Sneap come about?
A) Andy had the Priest album mixed by someone in America, immersively, and was really unhappy with the mixes. He didn’t want to do it anyway; it was something the label wanted. He was very much against Atmos for music. The guy’s an absolute genius of a mixer, so his opinions are extremely valid. They went back to this mixer a number of times on a couple of tracks, and he was still really unhappy.
He mentioned to Sam that he had just taken his stereo mixes and put them through an upmixer, and that’s what he was going to send off as the Atmos mixes. Sam said, “Please don’t do that,” and messaged me. I said, “Get Andy to send us stems for one song. I’ll do an example mix for him tonight. Get him to come here tomorrow and we’ll see if we can change his mind.”
He came with the original Atmos mixes and his upmixed versions. I played them both in the room first, and he instantly realised what was going on. The upmix version is not a suitable way of doing an immersive mix, and it’ll get rejected by labels anyway. I showed him what happens when you listen on headphones, and he was like, “Okay, that can’t happen.” I played him my mix, and he was happy. He said, “Okay, we can work with this. But what I’d like to do is come and sit with you and go through it all together.”
Q) How did you approach the Judas Priest mix to satisfy both Andy’s vision and the immersive format?
A) Andy wanted the Judas Priest binaural mix to be as close to the stereo mix as possible. So we went really subtle with that mix.
This is where Seventh Heaven became crucial: I use a very specific preset with the reflections turned almost all the way to early reflections only. It’s essentially no longer a reverb as such. It’s more of a room, a spatialiser.
We used that on the drums to bring them into the room a little bit. We moved the guitars into the room ever so slightly. Andy would be like, “Nope, stop there. I don’t want it any further back than that.” We managed to get the guitars nicely spaced out.
It’s a very subtle immersive mix, which is what Andy and the band wanted. One of the songs went on to be Grammy-nominated as best metal performance, which was lovely. The album went to number one in the rock and metal charts in various territories, including the UK. If you’re on Apple Music and you switch between stereo and spatial, you definitely get some immersion. On speakers in the room, it’s not the most “Atmos-y” mix ever, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s what Andy wanted, and it does that job brilliantly.
Q) Dream Theater was a very different brief, wasn’t it?
A) Yes, completely different story. When we finished the Judas Priest mix, Andy told me he was going into the Dream Theater mix. There was going to be a Blu-ray release that they wanted an immersive mix for. They were keeping that in mind during the production and mixing process, which was fantastic. I got all the stems I could ever dream of.
It was a concept album called “Parasomnia” about night terrors, completely gapless with these really cool dream sequences between songs. The brief from Andy and John Petrucci was basically to “go wild with the Atmos version.” They wanted it to be a compelling Atmos experience, which is music to my ears.
The kicker was I had 11 days to do the whole album – that’s not a lot for a Dream Theater record where the songs are like eight minutes each! The Pro Tools session ended up having 190 tracks total. It was a really fun mix. I got to really use the space: Jordan’s keyboard elements in certain positions, every time John came to a solo, it went to a different position, backing vocals around you. It works really well, without being gimmicky
For the Dream Theater project specifically, I did add reverbs to those segues between songs. When the album starts, there’s this whole scene of someone in their bedroom with the window open, and you can hear the street outside. I had loads of fun mixing that and creating this really nice environment, which sounds absolutely fantastic binaurally.
Seventh Heaven Professional as a Spatialiser
Q) Can you describe your mixing template and how Seventh Heaven Professional fits into it?
A) My template has evolved significantly. The first thing I have is an aux, which is just a pair of objects panned left and right with binaural off, essentially stereo. When I bring stems into my template using Forte AI, it automatically routes all those stems to that bus. This allows me to make sure the stems line up properly with the stereo master.
I have a folder called Effects where I have an instance of Seventh Heaven doing a very specific job. I also have another folder called Beds – custom object beds, not the Dolby bed. I have 3 different 7.1.4 beds with everything set to near, mid or far on each, and a 9.1.6 object bed with combinations of near and mid settings.
The only thing I use those beds for is as outputs for effects. So they become my outputs for Seventh Heaven Professional upmixers and few other things. What I’m using it for is decorrelating stereo things in the mix that I want to go to other places. For me, it doesn’t work just bussing a stereo signal out to various other positions in the room. I think it creates phase problems, multiple phantom centres which all meet at the same point, and once you listen on headphones, it essentially just becomes mono.
Q) You mentioned using Seventh Heaven Professional in a unique way as a spatialiser. Can you explain this technique?
A) This is probably my most important use of Seventh Heaven. I use a very specific preset and adjust the reflections/late reverb mix control pretty much all the way over to only early reflections.Â
This is crucial when doing Atmos from stereo stems. Someone’s already added reverb to that mix. I don’t want to add more reverb. Especially when listening to it on headphones, it ends up sounding wetter than the stereo mix, and that’s not my call to make as an Atmos mixer.
The way Seventh Heaven handles this is brilliant, because it does it in a way that folds down really well. It’s essentially invisible as a reverb. You can’t hear that I’ve added any reverb to the mix, but you get the spatial benefit. This was the key to making Andy Sneap happy with the Judas Priest mix.
Mark Gittins made extensive use of several instances of Seventh Heaven Professional in his immersive mixes for Judas Priest and Dream Theater.
Q) How many instances of Seventh Heaven Professional do you typically run?
A) If I’m doing a Dolby Atmos mix from stereo stems, I use that one spatialiser instance primarily. But if it’s an immersive-first mix, then there could be anything up to four instances of Seventh Heaven Professional going on for various different things.
Sometimes I’ll use multiple instances if I want to match a reverb on something. If I’ve been given a reverb that’s baked into a stem, let’s say a vocal, and I want that reverb to be in the room more, I’ll try to find a reverb in Seventh Heaven which matches what’s been used. This is easy because it’s such an amazing-sounding reverb, and the preset list is extensive. A lot of the time, people are going to have been using Bricasti M7s in the studio anyway.
Q) What specific presets or settings do you gravitate towards for rock and metal?
A) In rock and metal, I use the “Wooden Room” preset from Seventh Heaven Professional a lot for toms and snares. I generally use one of the room studio reverbs as an overall metal reverb, but again, I’ll adjust the early/late slightly – more early reflections, less late reverb. I’ll send guitars, drums, and bass out to that and just blend a bit in. It adds a really nice energy to a mix without it sounding too wet.
There’s a preset called “Django’s Room” that I use on guitars all the time. I’ll send guitars to that reverb and blend it in ever so slightly, often turning the reverb time down about 10-20 milliseconds. It’s a beautiful reverb for guitars, especially on rock stuff, because you don’t necessarily notice it as a long reverb, but it adds a nice sheen.
I think in rock and metal you try to use reverbs without making the mix sound wet. That’s the achievement, that’s the goal.
Q) What other presets stand out to you?
A) “London Plate” I use quite a lot. That’s a great one for vocals, really stunning. And I also really like the nonlinear reverbs on there as well. There are some really cool ones which are quite useful in various aspects. That London Plate is stunning. I love that one.
Technical Challenges in Immersive Mixing
Q) What challenges exist when working with reverb in immersive that don’t exist in stereo?
A) The main thing is that sometimes your reverb can sound right in the room, but when you listen on headphones or especially through a soundbar, it just sounds too wet. That’s not a Seventh Heaven specific thing, that’s just an immersive specific thing where it can sound so cool in the room because you’ve got it surrounding you, but once it’s in headphones, it just sounds too wet.
If you have too much reverb going to the rear, once that’s folded down binaurally, it just sounds like you’ve got more reverb in front of you. You don’t necessarily process what’s going on behind you too much binaurally, especially through Dolby Binaural with a general HRTF profile.
Once I’ve got reverbs in the room, I mess around with the balance between the different planes in Seventh Heaven Professional quite a lot. Sometimes I don’t want it in the front as much as everywhere else, so I’ll turn that down.
Q) How much time do you spend working binaurally versus on speakers?
A) I’d say the proportion is probably 50% between headphones and speaker listening. I spend a lot of time on headphones. I start the mix on speakers because it would be crazy not to. It would be boring not to! But I have multiple headphones: AirPod Pros, AirPod Max (which I use cabled for higher definition playback), Audeze Maxwells with head tracking, and Neumann NDH 30s.
I tend to start on the Neumanns for binaural and do my placement on those, then move to both pairs of AirPods when monitoring through Audiomovers for Spatial Audio. That enables me to compare the stereo master, the binaural, and the Apple Spatial on AirPods, which is essential. The Spatial Audio mix is the one most people will listen to.
Why Mark Chooses Seventh Heaven Professional
Q) What makes Seventh Heaven Professional particularly well-suited for immersive mixing?
A) It folds down really well. It doesn’t get phasey or anything. Nothing weird happens when you fold it down. Whether stereo or binaural, it is the best at that I find.
It’s got a certain tone to it – a specific tone, especially in the top end. The only way I can describe it is it’s got a nice posh top end to it. It’s got the sound of quality. You don’t necessarily want to hear the tails of the reverbs all the time, but you want the feeling of the space that the reverb is adding. Seventh Heaven does that really well. Because it is so clean, it has the ability to be very transparent in a mix. But equally, it can be a really lush, noticeable reverb as well.
Q) You mentioned you’ve tried other reverbs. What made you stick with Seventh Heaven Professional?
A) I did start off using multiple instances of reverbs, but then I got Seventh Heaven Professional and that’s pretty much all I use now. It ticks a lot of boxes. It’s very configurable, and it folds down perfectly.
I’ve never gone “I need something else to do this job.” It’s the only immersive reverb I own.
Q) Have you used the Very Low Frequency (VLF) control on Seventh Heaven Professional for specific creative effects?
A) Yes, I’ve automated that. For specific bits where there’s maybe a really big tom roll or something like that, I’ve automated the VLF up slightly so you get more very low frequency going on in those sections. It kind of blooms around you a little bit. That’s fun to do.
Learn more about VLF reverb and how to use it in our blog post.
Q) Why is Seventh Heaven Professional worth the investment for immersive mixing?
A) I think it’s the only one you’ll need, really. It’s got a lot of very good presets which cover different styles of reverb. It will often be the reverb that’s been used in a stereo mix, so it becomes very useful in that respect.
It has the transparency and clarity we’ve discussed. It has the adaptability in the fact that it’s so configurable. If you only buy one reverb as an immersive reverb, you’ll be more than happy.
The fact that you can balance the channel outputs, change between early and late reflections, that’s massive for me. And the low-frequency side of it is just incredible. It made sense buying it because it’s based on a Bricasti M7, and that’s a reverb that lots of mixers use.
Advice for Engineers Entering Immersive
Q) What advice would you give engineers considering immersive mixing?
A) You’ll never have more fun. This should be fun! If you’re having fun, you’re going to make things sound good, in my opinion, and immersive mixing is so fun. You can start it now in any DAW pretty much using a pair of headphones. Experiment as much as possible. Make use of objects. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. This is very new to everybody still. We’re still experimenting, finding new ways of doing things.
Most DAWs have a renderer built into them now. You don’t even have to buy anything extra. You can plug your headphones into your interface, switch on your Atmos-enabled button and get cracking with it.
What I would say is if you’re going to release stuff, try and get into a room first because things that sound really good on headphones, like, as an extreme example, putting a kick drum in the middle so it sounds from inside your head, sound really cool on headphones, but in a room sound absolutely crazy.
Q) If you had to pick one desert island plugin, what would it be?
A) I’ve got to say Seventh Heaven Professional, haven’t I? Reverb is very important in mixing. Not to make things really wet and put long tails on things, but to create the illusion of space and depth. Reverb is incredibly important for that. Seventh Heaven is the best I’ve found both in stereo and immersive as a reverb. It smokes any other reverb I’ve tried, and it’s just fantastic.
Thank you to Mark Gittins for taking the time to chat with us.
