How Black Lava Studios Brought Immersive Audio Home

Audio professional Steve Schatz partnered with Advanced Systems Group to transform a residential garage into Black Lava Studios, a professional immersive audio facility for Dolby Atmos music, film, sound design, and more.

For most people, a home audio setup is a place to listen to music or work on personal projects. Steve Schatz wanted a room he could trust for professional immersive audio work and one that would also give him the freedom to explore his own passion and ideas. Steve contributed to the book, Immersive Sound Volume II: the Design and Practice of Binaural and Multi-Channel Experiences.

That vision became Black Lava Studios, a professional immersive audio studio inside a converted garage at his home in Sacramento, California. The studio supports Dolby Atmos music mixing and mastering, film and documentary work, sound design, recording, quality control, and his own creative projects. Black Lava Studios may be a new facility, but it is the result of an idea Schatz has been developing for most of his life.

A Studio Years in the Making

Having worked in professional audio for approximately 25 years, and in addition to his independent work at Black Lava, Steve is an audio Swiss-army knife. He has participated in every facet of post-production sound and has worn many hats. Recently, he was accepted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Sound Branch, a true milestone of his experience. Earlier in his career, he worked on film dubbing stages for Universal, Warner Bros., Sony, Disney, and Skywalker Sound, and also contributed as a recording engineer at Apple for 3 years. That experience and the high standards of the rooms and people around him shaped what he wanted Black Lava Studios to become.

The idea also grew out of a lifelong interest in audio. Schatz began experimenting with home setups as a teenager, adding better equipment and acoustic treatment as his career progressed. “Every place I lived had some kind of setup,” he says. “It kept growing and becoming more complex. Black Lava is really the continuation of that.”

His relationship with Advanced Systems Group (ASG) began long before the studio took shape. A close colleague of Steve introduced him to ASG around 2011, leading to a longstanding relationship with ASG’s Collyer Spreen and the late Tom Menrath, former Director of ASG’s Audio Team. When Schatz was ready to build Black Lava Studios, he turned to the team at ASG who already understood his work and the standards he expected from the room.

Turning a Garage into a Professional Immersive Audio Studio

The idea for Black Lava Studios developed gradually. Schatz wanted the independence of a personal studio, and the space needed the accuracy, connectivity, and monitoring capabilities required for professional film and music work. Construction began in the summer of 2024 after an extensive permitting process. Working with RJ DeSanto of Melzak Media, a company specializing in audio/video consulting, Schatz converted the garage into a studio with the acoustic treatment, electrical infrastructure, and physical layout needed for immersive mixing.

ASG helped Schatz work through everything from speaker placement and room correction to conversion, signal routing, and the less obvious decisions that affect how a studio performs day to day. “Collyer guided me through many of the intangibles of building a studio; the things you may not think about until you have lived with a room,” Schatz explains. “The ASG team was incredibly patient. They loaned me equipment and gave me time to listen, work, and develop a real sense of what I wanted. It wasn’t just about selling equipment. They understood the workflow and what I was trying to build.”

That willingness to explore options was particularly important to Schatz. ASG team members are audio professionals, musicians, and studio owners themselves, giving the conversations a practical foundation.

“Steve has spent his career in some of the best audio environments in the industry, so he knew exactly what a professional room should feel like,” says Collyer Spreen, Professional Technical Sales Engineer at ASG. “Our job was to help him translate that experience into a studio, work through the options with him, and make sure every part of the monitoring system supported the way he wanted to work.”

Building the Immersive Monitoring Environment

ASG worked with Schatz to design and supply the 9.1.6 monitoring environment at Black Lava Studios. The system combines 15 Neumann KH 150 loudspeakers with a Neumann KH 870 subwoofer, while a Trinnov D-MON processor provides monitoring control and room optimization within the B-chain, helping the system maintain accuracy across the listening environment. 

At the center of Black Lava Studios is a Digital Audio Denmark (DAD) AX64 interface, providing analog, AES, Dante, and MADI connectivity. That range of formats allows Schatz to accommodate different sources and workflows without repeatedly reconfiguring the room. Schatz also uses a Lynx Studio Hilo converter for stereo and headphone monitoring.

When the Room Disappears: What Immersive Audio Really Means

The result is a room designed to reveal detail without drawing attention to the technology itself. For Schatz, that disappearance of the tech is the real meaning of immersion. “Immersive audio is often described in terms of formats and speakers, but to me it is the point where everything except what you are hearing disappears,” he says. “I can turn off the lights, switch off the LEDs on the speakers, and the room goes away. You become completely engrossed in the story or the song. That can happen in mono, stereo, or Atmos. The technology helps create it, but immersion is really the feeling.”

That philosophy shaped the studio. The goal was not to build a room that called attention to its specifications. It was to create an environment in which Schatz could make confident creative choices and hear how those choices would translate elsewhere.

A Room Built for Creative Possibility 

Black Lava Studios 9.1.6 immersive audio monitoring system

Black Lava Studios is used primarily as a Dolby Atmos mixing and mastering studio for music, along with film work, sound design, recording, and Schatz’s own productions. The room has also supported short films and documentaries, including recent work on Springsteen’s Nebraska Box set release. Steve mixed a 13-minute documentary edited and directed by Thom Zimny, who is known for his work on music videos and long-form concert films for Springsteen. “Thom didn’t have a single note on the mix. No notes! Now THAT is a room that I can trust,” added Steve. The project gave Schatz an early opportunity to put the new room through its paces. A sound supervisor approached him about completing the work at Black Lava Studios, testing whether the space could meet the creative and technical demands of a professional release.

“It was a chance to battle-test the room, and it came out beautifully,” Schatz says. “That was an important moment because it showed that the decisions we had made were working, not only technically, but creatively.”

Secure connectivity is essential for music or film projects. For clients that require air-gapped workflows, Schatz uses  Dante-based systems to route audio from an authorized machine or encrypted drive into the Black Lava monitoring environment while keeping sensitive content within the required security protocols. This ability to move between music, post-production, quality control, and experimentation was one of the main reasons for building the room. Rather than being tied to one type of project, Black Lava gives Schatz a consistent listening environment for nearly any audio work that comes his way.

Giving Creators More Space to Explore

Schatz believes immersive audio is at an important point in its development. Dolby Atmos music releases are becoming more common, but wider adoption will depend on giving artists a better understanding of what the format can contribute creatively.

“We need to educate artists about what immersive audio can do for their music,” he says. “It shouldn’t be something a label feels it has to deliver. When creators understand the tools and hear how they can enhance a song, they start to explore. That is when the format becomes meaningful.”

Cinema already has a well-established relationship with immersive sound, but music still offers considerable room for experimentation. Schatz sees technology companies, consumer device manufacturers, labels, engineers, and artists all playing a part in moving it forward. Black Lava Studios gives him a place to participate in that work. It is professional enough to support demanding projects, but personal enough to encourage the experimentation that first drew him to audio.

For ASG, the immersive audio system integration begins with listening. This project reflects that. Schatz did not need a standard package or a predetermined equipment list. He needed experienced partners who understood the level at which he worked, gave him room to evaluate his choices, and remained invested as the studio took shape.

“ASG went above and beyond,” Schatz says. “They offered knowledge, contacts, equipment, and moral support. We became friends very quickly because we share the same passion. They weren’t just integrators and builders. They understood why I wanted to create this room.”

What began with small speaker setups in Schatz’s teenage years is now a fully realized immersive studio, built to support the work he does today and the ideas he has yet to explore.

Learn more about ASG’s Audio solutions:  

Visit: https://www.asgllc.com/audio/

Further Reading

Read about how ASG Transformed Barefoot Sound’s Demo Studio