Grammy-winning and Juno Award-winning artist, engineer, and producer Justin Gray has been at the forefront of immersive music production for over a decade. For a recent project slated for release in 2026, he turned to Immersive Design Labs’ microphone array to capture immersive recordings at the source, creating deeper, richer, and more authentic sound. The IDL 7.0.4 Recording Array is an 11-microphone system with seven microphones capturing the horizontal soundfield and four positioned above to reproduce height information for immersive formats such as Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 RA. Gray explains what drew him to the technology: “Based on my experience as a spatial remixer, when we try to take something recorded for stereo and stretch it around a space, we’re already fighting a battle. Sometimes it works, and sometimes I just wish I could go back to the source and capture the sound and its relationship to the space around it.”
The IDL array makes native immersive capture possible while keeping sessions centered on the performance. Gray says, “It makes it much easier for engineers to capture immersive recordings natively at the source. The microphones are beautifully calibrated, sound great, and the setup comes together fast and precisely. As a producer and engineer, it got me to making music faster and made the technology more invisible to the artists. In the end, what matters most is the music.” For Gray, the music always comes first, and he believes the technology behind immersive recording should never overshadow the musicianship. He explains, “There is a moment when a musician is warming up and you can tell they are ready to perform. The worst thing you can do is not be prepared to capture that. A good producer will say, ‘Wherever the microphone is, we are hitting record,’ because the music comes first.” His Grammy-winning project ‘IMMERSED’ exemplifies an approach to recording as a form of composition, with every note conceived, recorded, and mixed with immersive intent. Gray notes, “The technology is actually a compositional tool, because I can balance perspective. I can layer multiple passes of a vocalist or write parts for percussion and tabla that fill all fifteen speakers in a way that simply could not be played live.”