Exploring the production of the Grammy Award-winning album Immersed

Producing music for immersive audio presents new opportunities for how we create, record, and experience music. It also challenges long-standing assumptions about the listener’s perspective. While conventional recording and production techniques are typically designed around a fixed stereo field, immersive audio invites composers, producers, and engineers to rethink every stage of the creative process, including how music is captured at the source.

To date, many immersive recording methodologies have emerged from orchestral production, where established approaches have been refined through decades of research and practice. This AES Toronto session explores how immersive recording techniques can be adapted for contemporary studio production, where arrangements are often built layer by layer and spatial decisions become part of the compositional process itself.

Drawing from his GRAMMY® Award-winning album Immersed, Justin Gray will demonstrate recording strategies developed specifically for immersive music production, with each instrument and ensemble captured with deliberate spatial intent. Through Dolby Atmos playback examples, diagrams, video, and session photography, attendees will examine the microphone arrays, spatial orchestration, and technical considerations behind each recording.

Musical examples will include drum kit, piano, brass quartet, string quartet, Himalayan singing bowls, handpan, sarangi, sarode, violin, clarinet, electric guitar, bass veena, trumpet, saxophone, and found sound recordings.

The session will cover techniques ranging from 11-channel immersive microphone arrays to compact four-channel height arrays designed for smaller ensembles and solo instruments. It will also demonstrate methods for combining close and ambient capture, preserving the intimacy and detail of contemporary studio production while supporting a fully immersive presentation.

Finally, Gray will discuss how these recordings are integrated during the immersive mixing process, illustrating how recording, production, and spatial design can work together to support the artistic and compositional intent of the music.