Milan, Italy – September 2020

To say that Sabino Cannone is a busy man is like calling the Nile River a small stream. Cannone likely has more entries in his calendar in a typical week than most of us have in several months. He moves seamlessly from engineering to mixing and mastering, sound design, consulting, and a dizzying range of other projects, clearly loving every minute of his busy schedule.

Cannone is also no stranger to new technology, including being an early adopter of immersive audio.

“I started with the first 5.1-compatible version of Pro Tools, 20 years ago,” he reveals.

“I mixed the show Pinocchio in Italy, which was the first musical in Europe to use surround. It was a big show – we did a 6.1 mix, as well as a live band – in a large theater; it was a very complex production. The show is still running, and still using the music I did 20 years ago. They did a run on Broadway three years ago, and I also mixed the soundtrack recording in 5.1 surround.”

Several other musicals in surround would follow, as well as a number of installations for visual artists in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. As immersive audio evolved to encompass an ever-widening realm of potential formats, Cannone continued to dive deeper, dabbling in soundscapes for movies, games, and exhibitions. Recently this has included a number of projects using Spat Revolution from Flux:: Immersive.

Cannone’s introduction to Spat Revolution came at the tail end of a project with long-time collaborator David Kahne, creating an immersive sonic environment for National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey, an installation in New York’s Times Square. As he explains, it was toward the end of the National Geographic project that he first encountered Spat Revolution.

” With Spat Revolution I can do a mix in 5.1 and it will work in 7.1, or in 20.2, it can really adapt to whatever format I need. That’s not just a huge time saver for me, but it also makes it easy for me to explore new creative ideas – It’s a great tool! ”

“In the National Geographic project, we had lots of different environments, with different formats and channel counts. David was the head of the project, and I worked with him in the sound development, creating multichannel soundscapes, as well as the final immersive mix in New York. We both worked in Nuendo, and I also used Pro Tools for the sound development.

We were pretty much done with the mixes when the Flux guys asked me to check out the very first version of Spat Revolution. I started using it for the last part of the soundscape development, and I was blown away with how powerful it was. You were free to create whatever format and channel count you wanted – it was absolutely portable to any setup. I could mix multiple stereo sources to create soundscapes in any format. I created several 5.1 and 7.1 libraries, and used it on some final mixes. I decided right then that I would use it on my next project too.”

That versatility, and the ability to adapt each mix to virtually any multichannel format, was a major factor in his enthusiasm for the program.

“The Ocean Odyssey exhibition is spread over several different rooms,” he observes. “Each room and environment uses several different speaker combinations. The possibility to not have to redo the mix for each venue on installations like this one is a big value for us.”

Spat’s object based protocol was a new concept, Cannone explains.

“This was my first time working in object-based mixing, and I will admit it took some getting used to. For me, the focus of the sound is the most important factor. With object based mixing, you have a lot more freedom in movement of sounds, but with that freedom it becomes more challenging to maintain focus. It was a challenge at first, but once I understood how to manage objects, it was amazing how much easier it was. I think it was good for me that my first experience was using it on a very complex project, with so many options, because it really pushed me to learn about how to keep things in focus.”

Maintaining focus and balance in the mix is important in any format, but even more so when working in immersive, says Cannone.

“I think before you can understand working in immersive, you have to understand balance. All the sounds have to sit nicely in a stereo field before you can spread them to a surround field. And even before stereo, the mix must work in mono. I work a lot in mono – that’s another thing I learned from David Kahne. It’s funny – if you listen to those old Motown recordings, they were all done in mono, and yet they almost sound like stereo, because of the space and the balance. It all goes back to the way the brain perceives sound.”

Needless to say, Cannone is still enthralled with working in immersive audio, and enthused to explore the potential of working with Spat Revolution.

“We have come very far from the early days of immersive,” he points out.

“Years ago, when you did a mix in 5.1 surround, it was only for 5.1. With Spat Revolution, I can do a mix in 5.1 and it will work in 7.1, in 20.2, it can really adapt to whatever format I need. That’s not just a huge time saver for me, but it also makes it easy for me to explore new creative ideas. It’s a great tool.”

Sabino Cannone’s MoReVoX Studio

Toulouse, France – August 2020

Veteran live sound engineer Johnny Torchy has spent many years mixing shows across his native France and the rest of Europe. He’s also known as an early adopter, and isn’t afraid to try out new tools and technologies in his work.
Most recently Torchy has been driving the faders for French melodic rockers Neko Light Orchestra.

In celebration of the band’s eight anniversary, Neko Light Orchestra booked the 800-seat Le Bascala, in the Bruguières district of Toulouse, for their “Marathon Musical Festival,” featuring eight concerts in 12 hours. As if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the decision was made to present the show in an immersive environment.

Torchy says the goal was to recreate the location of the various musicians on stage – up to 13 members – while creating a sense of depth using advanced room acoustics simulation. To meet the challenge, Torchy chose object-based immersive mixing via Spat Revolution and Wave Field Synthesis technology.

“Part of the challenge was that WFS typically calls for a large number of loudspeakers to create reliable results,” Torchy observes.

“But in fact, for this project I’ve used only seven line array sources, all in front of the audience. The results were very impressive.”

Torchy’s system utilized seven clusters of four L-Acoustic KARA loudspeakers facing the audience, with seven stacks of two KIVA cabinets on stage lip for front fill. Driving the mix was a Yamaha CL5 console equipped with a Rio 3224D I/O box bringing in 60 inputs. System connectivity was via a Dante DVS network, with a MacBook Pro running FLUX:: Immersive Spat Revolution.

“Most of the sources were sent post-fader to Spat Revolution, except for a few of the more complex instruments using multiple microphones, like piano, harp, and string sections, where we sent summed stems.” Torchy explains.

” Whatever the placement of each musical object, I was able to use Spat Revolution WFS to create the image I had created in the studio. I don’t know of any other system that can do this over such a wide audience area. ”

Using Spat Revolution’s advanced reverb engine enabled Torchy to perform advanced acoustic simulation, recreating perceived dimension and space in ways traditional consoles and PA systems cannot achieve.

“I was shocked,” Torchy reports.

“The sensation was simply incredible. You could literally make the source disappear. Of course there’s still sound coming from the loudspeakers, but the speakers themselves literally become transparent, with the actual wavefront of the source objects dominating. It’s no longer the same as mixing at a console with left and right channel. Its more like mixing in a virtual room, created in Spat Revolution.”

Torchy had previously built a smaller seven-speaker setup to test the system and do preproduction, but the impact in a live setting was simply remarkable.

“With Spat and WFS, I’m able to transmit the imaging and the artistic emotion not just to 15 or 20 percent of the audience that’s seated in the middle, but to the entire audience,” he enthuses. “Whatever the placement of each musical object, I was able to use Spat Revolution WFS to create the image I had created in the studio. I don’t know of any other system that can do this over such a wide audience area.”

For Torchy, this was an experience he will not soon forget.

“It was beyond any other setup I’ve ever deployed. It will be hard to go back to anything less.”

FLUX:: IRCAM Spat Revolution is an object-based immersive audio mixing suite that includes a stand-alone rendering and processing application, and a set of plugins for audio and automation integration with various DAW hosts.

Spat Revolution renders virtual environments (Rooms) using a variety of spatialization techniques and panning protocols, and integrates the fundamental channel and scene-based approaches; Ambisonics and HOA.

While rendering to loudspeakers, which often is the final destination, one of the most often-used techniques in Spat Revolution relies on binaural synthesis and the ability to render the source objects, arbitrarily positioned in a virtual environment, to a pair of standard headphones using the same two audio channels. 

Binaural takes two forms: First, binaural can be chosen as a stream type in order to virtualize every individual source-object and the room effect (acoustic simulation) of a Spat Revolution room (your object-based mix). This is the ideal scenario when creating content for live streaming, or for bouncing the two audio channels as a binaural deliverable.

Because multiple rooms are supported, some scenarios may include having some source objects connected to a binaural room, while others are connected to a standard stereo room. This strategy enables the mixer to, for example, keep some instruments that are rich in transients, like a kick drum in a stereo pan law, very much locked in between the ears. A simple summation then returns everything together in the headphone mix in the end.

The second form of binaural is binaural monitoring. This makes it possible to audition any channel-based speaker arrangements over your headphones. In this particular case, you are virtualizing each speaker as a source, which is extremely convenient when you don’t have access to the diffusion system you are preparing the content for. 

In the two binaural modules in Spat Revolution, Room or Monitoring, there is an option to choose an HRTF. By default the HRTF used is Kemar, though this can be changed in the set up in the Spat Revolution preferences page.

Want to read more?

Read on Getting your Aural ID for binaural reference accuracy and Managing and Importing HRTF.

From Pre-Production to Live Show at the 360 Paris Music Factory

Democracy for Immersive Audio – Introducing the use of immersive audio in a performing arts venue is not a crazy exclusive scientific stunt, and not something that is out of reach today. 

In the above video, Sound engineer Jean-Loup Pecquais talks about how to setup and configure a standard stereo or LCR system, with additional loudspeakers surrounding the audience, running through Spat Revolution to provide alternate advanced panning tools for mixing immersive for a concert at the 360 Paris Music Factory venue in Paris, France. A venue where guest artists and engineers now gets the the creative freedom to produce immersive content with the in-house system.

The 360 ​​Paris Music Factory venue opened in the beginning of February 2020, in the heart ofthe Barbès district in Paris, and then presented its first immersive concert; a unique musical experience created by the Orléans jazz trio Akagera. Flux:: has been working in the 360 Paris Music Factory with the concert spatialisation aspect of the project and the venue is now equipped with Spat Revolution processing computer to host engineers and offer an alternate panning

The 360 is a quite small venue, with less than 200 seats and a total capacity of 300 with the tiers folded back. The acoustics in the venue is very controlled and quite dry making it an ideal situation for spatialization, and for playing with the direct sound to bring an additional dimension to the spectator’s experience.

The 360 Music Factory offers a pleasant setting for working with immersive audio. With their in-house Nexo system and a signal path going through an Allen & Heath SQ5 and a simple 8 speaker system setup, using Spat Revolution, gives the audience a full true immersive experience.

The NEXO system consist of two P12s out front and six ID24s for the main floor provides the option for immersive sound. Up top at the balcony  two P12s and two ID24s behind, covers the immersive aspect. The Allen & Heath SQ5 and two RIOs on the stage, all communicate on a Dante network, which enables a particularly fluid interaction with the SPAT Revolution.

The on-site system relies on eight main speakers surrounding the listener, and using the blueprint of their placement, provided by the NEXO NS-1 system, the speaker arrangement was sketched up in SPAT Revolution. By entering the placement of each speaker into the SPAT and from that configuration create a binaural simulation, the engineer can then listen in binaural from home, or anywhere outside the venue, and get an idea of what may happen during the show.

This approach creates the advantage to get started already in beforehand, using a multitrack recording from a previous concert, sending the tracks to Auxes in a DAW (in our case, Reaper) with SPAT Send plug-ins inserted, and then summing to a bus with the SPAT Return plug-ins inserted to get the signal return back from SPAT again.

In SPAT Revolution all the inputs correspond to the send plug-ins from the DAW, each and one connected to a source object, and the sources routed to a Room to work virtually in the acoustic space of the concert hall, distributing the sounds within the space, start imagining soundscapes and playing with the reverb, all in order to envisage how the show will play out in the end.

To monitor this in binaural a Master can be created and linked to the Room, with a conversion block in the Binaural Monitoring block to convert the actual 8.1 system to binaural.  Option in the Binaural Monitoring block to select an HRTF

With this setup, it’s possible to start working on the placement of the instruments in the space, based on the recorded material, and to use the workflow to anticipate a certain number of things that may happen in the venue.