Behind the scenes of a TEC-Award nominated studio

Please introduce yourself 

Hi, my name is Dennis Bush. I'm head of design and CEO of Acoustic Spaces.

Acoustic Spaces is a German-based studio design company. We are here at Brainworx HQ in Germany, Langenfeld.

Everything I did on this long road has led me to this studio, my personal masterpiece I would say.

How did your collaboration with Brainworx begin? 

I had a personal connection with Brainworx for some years. They had a different building at the Shusterinsel, where their former HQ was located with a big Neve console.

They asked me to redo the acoustics of the room and I was invited. I tuned the speakers and the room a bit and did what I would describe as "Acoustic Feng Shui". 

We were supposed to do a new room, but then a very bad natural disaster happened. Maybe you heard of the big flood that has occurred 3 years ago, The Ahr Valley disaster.

The Former company HQ was flooded and so was the Neve console, so the project was dead. But luckily they found an even better building which is the one that surrounds this place right now.

What was the vision for the studio? 

They needed a plug-in development room, a stereo mastering grade listening room, a Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 room where the LFE channel, the .1 channel is managed by six subwoofers.

What is really best for a stereo setup is a flush mount situation for loudspeakers, of course. But if you have loudspeakers at the back, you can't fire with the rears against a reflecting front wall, it will not work.

So we had to find solutions for that. We had really to pre-plan every speaker location and how they will interact. 

What makes this room exceptional ?

This room is completely designed with Helmholz resonators. I can target everything that I need to do and only target what I need to do. One of the wishes was daylight so we brought in transparent diffusion on the back.

How do resonators improve acoustics? 

Behind every fabric you see in the front there are basically resonators.

This is a great advantage and this setup brings us up to 95% of what is doable with passive acoustics.

The rest in this room is done by a Trinnov Altitude.

Why did you choose Trinnov for this room? 

I'm a personal user of Trinnov for 10-12 years. I really love what the software and what the unit can do.

Basics, first reflection points, some absorption for the lower areas, then the Trinnov can really shine. It makes everything more focused when it does not have to repair.

The last 10% that changed everything 

Even when I can reach a 95% "we are there" situation, with a unit like the Trinnov it is possible to go to 100% easily.

The perfect design of the room, the acoustics are working, it's well built out. But then we have a table which introduces reflection, we have certain other parts in the room, racks gear that can change something.

If you have this kinds of situation, put a Trinnov, calibrate to the situation and you have reached the final 100%.

What is your experience with the Trinnov calibration? 

I know always the day will be easy when there's a Trinnov around. I can just come in, put up the Trinnov microphone, do the basic configuration calibration within minutes most of the times, and then I'm just there.

It makes everything very smooth for the start of calibrating a room. Everything is just there, this is just a piece of cake for me.

If a Trinnov is around, I'm very happy.

How long does it take you to calibrate this 7.1.4 room?

This is a 7.1.4 Atmos room with six subwoofers for the LFE channel and the bass management. If I were to tune a room like this without the Trinnov, this is easily an 8h hour, maybe more workday. If I have a Trinnov at hands and use the calibration step first, I can do the room in half of the of that time.

TEC Awards Nomination - What made the difference?

I'm in the lucky situation that I got nominated for TEC Studio Design Award with this room. Maybe there's even more blessing to be expected in 2026. We'll see!  The room certainly deserves it.

Is Trinnov worth the cost? 

If I would be in a situation where I have to give upcoming or even established engineers a tip about using a certain tool to enhance their rooms, it always would be to use a Trinnov. I've listened to all the contenders over the years.

Due to my job, I have to know them because I always have to provide the best tools available on the market to my customers and I always came back to Trinnov.

They have a phase alignment inside their solution implemented after the EQ which is gamechanging. Nobody else can provide this this feature.

Trinnov is the way to go!