Dialogue that sounds like nobody ever replaced it. That’s the whole job of an ADR recording studio.
Sonic Forest Studios is an ADR recording studio near Victoria, BC, built inside the first Dolby Atmos certified 7.1.4 room on Vancouver Island. Post houses in Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles send me cues, their supervisor directs live over Zoom, the actor stands in my booth, and the files land in their pipeline the same day. Three lines on a local series or an entire feature dubbed into English, the workflow is the same and it’s already been through the wringer.
The same rooms have mixed and mastered music with over 454 million streams and 2.6 billion video views behind it. I mention that because an ADR recording studio that also has to satisfy label QC tends to be a quiet, honest-sounding room.
Post supervisors and ADR supervisors who have a performer on Vancouver Island and a mix schedule somewhere else. That’s most of my work. The actor lives here, or is shooting here, or is home for the week, and flying them to Vancouver or Toronto for two cues makes no sense. So the session comes to me and the direction comes over the link.
I’ve delivered ADR and voice-over for series and features supervised out of Picture Shop, Formosa Group, Sound Dogs and Take 5 Post in Toronto, and for an LA-based post team on a streaming feature. Producers on Vancouver Island shooting independent film and documentary use the room for ADR and for the final mix so nothing has to go over to the mainland.
Toronto post houses, an LA streaming team, and a Slovak producer who needed an entire feature in English. Every session hits the post house’s spec the first time, or I fix it before it leaves here.
Networks our ADR and dubbing sessions have been recorded for, and the streaming services where our Dolby Atmos mixes live.
You send me the cue sheet and the picture. I build the session in Pro Tools, load the cues into Cue Pro, and check the frame rate against your reference before anything rolls. On the day, your supervisor joins a standard Zoom call. Nothing to install on their end. Inside that call they hear the studio feed in broadcast quality through Source-Nexus, not Zoom’s compressed audio, so they’re judging the actual mic signal. Talkback goes both ways between takes, the actor sees the streamer and hears the beeps, and we move.
Cue Pro takes your cues in whatever you already have: EdiCue exports, ADR Master projects, CSV, Excel, Pro Tools session info, or Netflix TTAL. Reasons and notes come across with them, and the character track is scrubbed to the frame before we start. I’d rather spend the prep time so the session time goes to performance.
Files go back the same day over whatever transfer your post house already uses. Signiant Media Shuttle is common with the Toronto houses. 24-bit/48kHz BWF, dry and unprocessed, named by cue, organized by character, session starting at 00:00:00:00. If you want the Pro Tools session too, you get it. I walked through a real one, start to finish, in how a remote ADR session works from Vancouver Island.
The biggest job this room has taken on was the full English-language dub of Sugar Candy (Cukrkandl), a Czech-Slovak feature for Attack Film SK. That was 1,171 cues across 16 speaking characters, cast through a professional Victoria agency, recorded to picture against adapted scripts at 23.976, and delivered to the re-recording mixer in Bratislava.
The part nobody tells you about dubbing is how much of it is logistics. Frame rate confirmed before the first cue. Per-character cue counts so the schedule matches the actual load (the lead had 238 lines; a bit part had 16). Every cue checked against the screener twice, because a sync slip you don’t catch in the booth is a sync slip the mixer catches in Prague, and by then the actor’s gone home.
Production was on another continent for the whole project. The director joined from Europe, the mixer got clean stems, and the film went out. That’s the process I now run for every dub.
Dolby’s own engineers helped spec the mix room. It runs 7.1.4 monitoring on 11 ADAM Audio S3H monitors, and it’s the first room on Vancouver Island built to monitor a theatrical Atmos mix properly. The ADR booth is separate, treated, and quiet enough that room tone isn’t something I have to hide in the mix.
For ADR I record boom and lav together: a Sennheiser MKH 416 for matching a production boom track, and a Sanken COS-11D on the body. If your sound team sends a mic list, I match it. If they don’t, I ask what was on set.
Recording runs through Focusrite RedNet over Dante into Pro Tools Ultimate.
I mix in stereo, 5.1, 7.1 and Dolby Atmos. For productions on the island, that means the post doesn’t have to leave for Vancouver. Picture editors and directors can sit in the room or attend remotely and hear the real monitor feed.
I’ll also tell you plainly which format your release needs. Paying for an Atmos mix your platform can’t play helps nobody.
Commercial VO, narration, animation, documentary. Directed sessions with your client on the line giving notes in real time. You get labeled, edited files, not a dump of raw takes.
Loop group and walla run the same way as ADR: cued, to picture, with the supervisor listening live.
For larger projects I work with a professional Victoria casting agency, and I keep a growing list of island voice talent for smaller ones. If you need a local performer to match a voice, send me the reference and I’ll come back with options.
Because every film is different, I quote dubbing and ADR packages by project. Send me your cue count or your script and I’ll come back with a real number and a realistic timeline. Two-cue pickups and 1,000-cue dubs are both welcome; the quote just looks different. If you want to see what goes into the number first, I wrote up how much ADR costs and what drives the quote.
Automated Dialogue Replacement. Re-recording dialogue in the studio when the production sound is unusable, or when lines change after the shoot. Despite the name, nothing about it is automated. It’s craft.
Yes, and most do. They join a normal Zoom call and hear the studio feed in broadcast quality through Source-Nexus. They talk to the actor between takes and approve as we go. Nothing to install.
EdiCue exports, ADR Master projects, CSV, Excel, Pro Tools session info text, and Netflix TTAL, all straight into Cue Pro. A PDF cue sheet works too; it just takes me longer to build.
Whatever your post pipeline needs. My default is 24-bit/48kHz BWF, dry and unprocessed, named by cue and organized by character, session starting at 00:00:00:00. Same-day delivery on most sessions.
Yes. Casting coordination, lip-sync recording to adapted scripts at the correct frame rate, editing, and delivery to your re-recording mixer’s specs. I did exactly this for Sugar Candy, a Czech-Slovak feature dubbed into English.
Yes. The production carries the ACTRA engagement; I make sure the Performer Work Report is filled in and signed at wrap and a copy goes where it needs to go.
I work with a professional Victoria casting agency for larger projects and keep a roster of Vancouver Island voice talent for smaller ones.
The ADR recording studio is in Metchosin, BC, about 30 minutes from downtown Victoria. The address comes with your booking confirmation.
Yes, and also in 5.1 or stereo if that’s what your distribution actually needs.
Tell me about it. Scoring a film or finishing a soundtrack? We also handle Dolby Atmos mixing for music, from singles to full albums.