Berlin, Germany—April 2020…

Given his background mixing front-of-house for rock bands, it’s no surprise that when Sphereo sound designer and 3D audio operator Jonas Gehrmann discusses immersive audio, he focuses a lot on music use cases. “In the end, immersive audio for concerts should be about music and not about technology,” he insists. “If you make an immersive concert mix where stuff is flying around, after two minutes it’s boring. We might use FLUX:: Immersive’s SPAT Revolution to create a more 360 degree image of the stage from the viewers position, so you are standing next to the guitar player and you hear the drums and guitar from there. We can use it to create a space for the in-ear monitors, where you usually wouldn’t hear the onstage sound. We create an immersive experience on the stage, but it’s still within the music; it’s not a rollercoaster ride.”

Gehrmann uses SPAT Revolution to create immersive environments in a variety of venues, ranging from concert and theater venues such as Berlin’s historic Friedrichstadt-Palast theater, where he is a member of the sound designers’ team, to planetariums and other settings. “When you’re providing an immersive experience, every sound has to reach every point in the audience,” he observes. “When you do that with regular level panning, if you make it loud enough to hear in some places, it’s much too loud in other places. With SPAT, it’s possible to do an immersive experience where the mix is very accurate everywhere in the theater. We use SPAT to give the audience a natural sound; the people should think there’s nothing on the PA. What I do and what Fabian [Gehrmann’s Sphereo partner, room acoustic engineer Fabian Knauber] does has to be about music and to involve natural hearing.”

Another advantage of SPAT is that it’s scalable and can be used in venues of varying sizes and with different loudspeaker systems. “For the immersive planetarium shows I did with pianist Kai Schumacher, we did 15 shows at 6 different planetariums over a couple of years,” Gehrmann recalls. “Every planetarium was different. Sometimes the people just sat in rows or in a circle because the stage is the dome. Schumacher is playing the piano live, and the sound goes to speakers in the roof. We had a 12-, a 16-, and a 24-speaker setup that we carried around to cover the various planetariums and other venues. With SPAT, we were able to provide a great sounding immersive experience in all of them.”

That’s not to say it’s always easy adapting to different speaker systems. “Each type of loudspeaker gives you different results because of the loudspeaker’s design, so you have to account for that,” notes Gehrmann. “Compression, distortion, and phase issues can affect your results. Older halls where you have a a combination of different types of speakers can be especially challenging. We’ve worked in spaces where the differences between speakers weren’t correct for the room, some speakers were an odd shape, and we had totally weird problems. But SPAT makes those issues much easier to deal with than other immersive systems.”

To date, all of Gehrmann’s projects have been for stationary audiences but he is eager to try new things. “I want to do an installation with SPAT where people can move around,” he muses. “One of our ideas is to put audio on headphones for people in an audience and track their positions as they move around. The sound will change along with their position.”

SPAT is a professional tool, Gehrmann emphasizes, and to get the best results, you need to understand what you’re doing. “It’s not a trial-and-error tool for people who aren’t willing to learn how it works,” he asserts. “You have to know about room acoustics and which features will do what you want. But once you learn how to use it, it’s a powerful creative tool. SPAT gives you ideas and inspiration for new things you can try because it can do so much. It’s a big playground. And if you suggest a good idea to the people at FLUX:: Immersive, they will implement it, so you can directly influence the product. That’s very different from other companies.”

The easiest and fastest way to get started with SPAT Revolution in a DAW environment is by using the Local Audio Path mode, running SPAT Revolution on the same workstation as the DAW.

To facilitate this and to get started easily, we have created sessions and templates for a variety of DAWs and SPAT Revolution.

Steinberg NUENDO

Project Sessions and Templates downloads

Template used in the video tutorial

• Steinberg Nuendo Tutorial Template
  Binaural, Atmos 5.1.4, NHK 22.2 with binaural monitoring

Other templates

• Basic music NPR
  Stereo, 5.1, Atmos 5.1.4  output formats with binaural monitoring.

• Advanced multi-format NPR
  Atmos 7.1.2, NHK 22.2 and multiple binaural output formats.

• Ambisonic HOA mixing NPR
  HOA in 3rd order and binaural monitoring output formats.

Resources for more information and troubleshooting

• Nuendo (SPAT Revolution User Guide)
• SPAT Revolution  Send and Return DAW Troubleshooting (SPAT Revolution User Guide)
• How to set up SPAT Revolution with NUENDO (YouTube Tutorial)
• SPAT Revolution Integration with Nuendo 10 (Steinberg Yamaha Network Channel on YouTube)

AVID Pro Tools

Project Sessions and Templates downloads

Template used in the video tutorial

• AVID Pro Tools Tutorial Template
  Binaural 5.1 and 7.1.2 output formats

Other templates

• Basic music PTX
  Stereo, 5.1, Atmos 5.1.4  output formats with binaural monitoring

• Advanced multi-format PTX
  Atmos 7.1.2, NHK 22.2 and multiple binaural output formats

• Ambisonic HOA mixing PTX
  HOA 3rd order and  binaural monitoring output formats

Note: For Avid HDx users, please make sure to use the specific Pro Tools HDX template session. This ensures that the Native SPAT Revolution plugin gets instantiated under Pro Tools HDX systems using local audio path (the audio pipe or bridge) function of SPAT Revolution production suite.

Resources for more information and troubleshooting

• AVID Pro Tools (SPAT Revolution User Guide)
• SPAT Revolution Send and Return DAW Troubleshooting (SPAT Revolution User Guide)
• How to set up SPAT Revolution with Pro Tools (YouTube Tutorial)

Merging Technologies Pyramix

Project Sessions and Templates downloads

Template used in the video tutorial

• Merging Tutorial Template
  Binaural, 5.1 and NHK 22.2 output formats.

Other Templates

• Basic music PMX
  Stereo, 5.1, Atmos 5.1.4  output formats with binaural monitoring.
  
  
• Advanced multi-format PMX
  Atmos 7.1.2, NHK 22.2 and multiple binaural output formats.
• Ambisonic HOA mixing PMX
  HOA in 3rd order and binaural monitoring output formats.

Resources for more information and troubleshooting

• SPAT Revolution Send and Return DAW Troubleshooting (SPAT Revolution User Guide)
• How to set up Spat Revolution with Pyramix (YouTube Tutorial)

 Cockos Reaper

Project Sessions and Templates downloads

Template used in the video tutorial

• Reaper Tutorial Template
  Binaural, 5.1 and NHK 22.2 output formats.

Other Templates

• Basic music REA
  Stereo, 5.1, Atmos 5.1.4  output formats with Binaural monitoring.
• Advanced multi-format REA
  Atmos 7.1.2, NHK 22.2 and multiple binaural output formats.
  
• Ambisonic HOA mixing REA
  HOA 3rd order and  binaural monitoring output formats.

Resources for more information and troubleshooting

• Cockos Reaper (SPAT Revolution User Guide)
• SPAT Revolution Send and Return DAW Troubleshooting (SPAT Revolution User Guide)
• How to set up Spat Revolution with Reaper (YouTube Tutorial)

Additional Resources

Our product specialists are continuously working on different setups and templates, and in the future we will add templates for Steinberg Nuendo, Ableton Live and many others.

• Daw Integration Templates (FLUX:: Knowledge Base)
• Bitwig Studio (SPAT Revolution User Guide)

Amsterdam, The Netherlands—April 2020…

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA) is both a theater venue and home to a large-scale, international traveling company presenting established and new theater and dance works. Led by director Ivo van Hove, ITA has increasingly worked with immersive sound environments in recent years. It can be demanding in its home theater, and can present special challenges when the company travels. “One of our venues is about 600 seats, a modern blackbox theater,” remarks ITA sound department member and sound system designer Erwin Sterk. “But we also tour to huge auditoriums with 2,000 seats, and it was quite hard to have our streams or files for immersive audio working in different speaker setups.”

Sterk and his team could partially meet the challenges with various combinations of software but none were entirely satisfactory until they started using FLUX:: Immersive’s Spat Revolution software. Initially, they experimented with an earlier Max patch version of Spat from IRCAM, recalls Sterk, “but Spat from IRCAM was still somewhat experimental, and not completely an end user product for live shows. We used it for tests and to create the reverb, but I’d always end up bouncing the results.”

Two years ago, Sterk found out that FLUX:: Immersive had built a finished product that works with OSC. The timing was perfect, as ITA was preparing a new show called A Little Life, with a string quartet and a composer whose work Sterk felt would benefit from Spat. The composer trusted Sterk’s judgement, and the results were excellent. “We ended up using Spat for a lot of the soundscapes that surround the audience, and I also used it for amplifying the string quartet,” Sterk recalls. “The show was quite intense, and at times we used Spat to spatialize and move the separate instruments around the audience. And when the quartet switched from playing harmoniously and softly to playing something very staccato and abstract, suddenly they’re dry and spatialized. People were saying, “Wow, it sounds so natural, and you don’t hear the amplification. How do you achieve that?” The creative team and composer were amazed by how quickly we could achieve this without re-programming in the mixing desk.”

This kind of programming with a mixing console takes a lot of time and is more complicated, Sterk relates, “and in stressful situations it’s tricky because you can mess up with your scenes or with your routing. With Spat’s virtual spaces, it’s more realistic and consistent. You can mix the directions where the source comes from, and Spat calculates all the reflections and the reverb.”

In the another play, an actor is playing different roles, such as the maitre d’hote / hotel clerk, or a vendor who is selling strawberries on the beach. “When he’s shouting from off stage, like ‘Buone fragole!’ or making an announcement in the hotel, we use Spat to place it so it sounds like he’s located where we want him,” describes Sterk. “The results moving from the rehearsal room to the venue are amazing. We even use Spat as a reverb engine for some objects in the rooms that don’t move, and we use it as a surround burst.”

At times, Sterk employs Spat as one would a game engine. “In a video game, you have music and effects around you, and they’re all oriented relative to your changing position,” he observes. “Using sound as objects opens a whole new set of creative tools for a variety of applications” as sounds are moving around you or an audience starts moving.

One of the biggest advantages of using Spat for a touring company like ITA is the ability to re-create a design in different venues. “If you move to a new venue, you have to adapt the speaker plan,” details Sterk. “In Spat it’s easy to make changes to the speaker positions in the software to re-create the sound of the room. But there is more. If, for example, your sound effect is a bird flying around, and you don’t like the trajectory in the new venue, you don’t have to re-create your whole show file. With three mouse clicks, you can draw a new line, listen to it, and have the new version for today. With Spat, if you know the OSC commands, you can start from scratch and work with it. We finally have a tool that we can easily bring into a production without needing a big investment.”

Sterk especially likes to use his imagination with Spat. “It’s really cool to use Spat live, and it’s super-fast,” he offers. “When the director wants something special, you can make it directly with your mouse or with a touch screen. When he’s happy, you can re-record the OSC files with a sequencer, to reproduce what you did. When using Spat, I don’t care about the numbers anymore; I completely forget about the values of settings. I get the speakers and the objects right, and I’m just creating a sound I am looking for. And Spat has parameters you don’t have in other tools that enable you to create cool sounds. We used Spat to create a really nice effect with a fade from a small to a big room and from big room to small, changing the room absorption. There are a lot of fun things you can do.”

Although one can use Spat for wild immersive effects for live concerts or theatrical plays, Sterk feels that isn’t always the best use. “I think it works more to place the whole audience in a room with re-created room acoustics to extend your soundscapes,” he opines. “You get a better and equal mix because you can achieve a localization that’s spread over multiple speakers. Spatialisation adds an extra dimension to the creative pallet. Whether it’s a trumpet flying around or realistic acoustics in a particular scene, it has to be an extension of the story you want to tell. We can achieve that with Spat, and that’s why it’s the best on the market.”

Tokyo, Japan – April 2020…

Shinjuku has a long history as one of Tokyo’s most vibrant areas, and Waseda is arguably the district’s cultural and creative nexus. The area is home to the renowned Waseda University, as well as numerous museums, theaters, night clubs, and performance spaces.

Waseda’s newest venue, the Artware hub, opened its doors in late 2019. Commissioned by the Kakehashi (Arts and Cultural Foundation), the space is the realization of a lifelong dream of Roland Corporation founder and visionary Ikutaro Kakehashi.

What appears at first glance to be a fairly typical live performance venue is, in fact, much more. Designed as an experimental acoustic space, the facility incorporates an unparalleled 36.8 multi-channel immersive audio system based around FLUX::Immersive’s SPAT Revolution software engine.

The concept for the space was brought to life by Ikuo Kakehashi, the Kakehashi Foundation’s Director, and son of the famed inventor, working with producer/engineer Keiichi Itoh. As Ikuo explains, his father was always cognizant of the relationship between music and technology, and the impact of an environment on creative collaboration. “My father used to say that no matter how good the instrument maker made the instrument, it would be meaningless without a proper place to experience it,” Ikuo observes.

The venue takes its name from the term “Artware,” coined by Ikutaro Kakehashi. The term refers to not just hardware and software, but also to the human experience of an artistic performance. “We wanted to create a space that was more than merely a concert hall, that was a place where content of all kinds could be realized, and an environment where multiple people could gather and share in that performance,” Ikuo explains.

The immersive listening experience was an important part of the performance environment for Ikutaro Kakehashi. As early as 1991, he had developed a 3D audio processor dubbed RSS – Roland Sound Space – one of a number of early attempts to create an immersive experience using regular stereo speaker configuration. “In designing the space, one of the most important areas of content creation for us was immersive audio,” Ikuo confirms.

At the heart of the immersive audio system is FLUX:: Immersive’s SPAT Revolution, providing acoustic simulation that allows the user to freely arrange input sources in a virtual space where loudspeakers may be freely placed to create virtually any configuration of sonic landscape.

The system is configured using a single purpose-built computer. An RME HDSPe-MADI FX interface provides up to 64 channels of MADI I/O at 96kHz across the 36-channel system. An Avid S6L console offers tight integration with SPAT Revolution for controlling input sources. Since the actual FOH mix position is program dependent, the S6L is purposely housed in a road case to enable it to be moved to the appropriate sweet spot.

Audio sources from the stage, as well as pro tools outputs, are connected to the S6L via AVB, and signal is routed to SPAT via MADI. An Avid MTRIX is at the core of the Artware hub system, providing routing matrix and system monitoring and control. Outputs are converted from MADI to Dante for system distribution.

The multi-channel speaker arrangement is comprised of 24 in-wall speakers at two elevations, 2.5 meters and 5 meters, each with 12 speakers arranged in 360 degrees at 30 degrees apart. Nine more speakers – eight in a circle and one at zenith – are attached to a central grid mounted to the ceiling. Three more speakers occupy temporary locations on the front floor for special effects. Eight subwoofers in four cardioid pairs complete the loudspeaker configuration.

Since its opening in the fall of 2019, the Artware hub has hosted a wide range of performances and garnered high praise from visitors and performers alike. Thanks to the efforts of Ikuo Kakehashi and Keichi Ito, and innovative technologies like SPAT Revolution, Ikutaro Kakehashi’s vision can finally be realized.

Systems Solutions Provider: ROCK ON PRO

Hudson Valley, NY – April 2020…

When British playwright William Congreve first coined the phrase, “music has charms to soothe the savage beast,” he likely had no idea of the depth of that observation. The therapeutic properties of music have been proven to exceed even our wildest expectations, and have long been a focus of the medical, neuroscience, and wellness communities.

For multi-instrumentalist Josh Peck, the power of music as a healing force is something he has quite literally immersed himself into. From his home base at the Sound Dojo, a 20.2 channel  immersive retreat he designed and built in New York’s Hudson Valley, the classically trained composer and sound designer merges immersive soundscapes and the healing arts, utilizing FLUX Immersive’s SPAT Revolution software to create a wide range of exhibits and experiential events.

Peck credits his background in music production and composition with putting him on his current path. “I came up as a typical studio rat, working as an assistant engineer at Unique Recording in New York,” he recounts. “That led to a job at the Lodge Studios. I ended up on the production side, as a composer, but I think along the journey I lost some of the passion for why I got into music in the first place. A lot of major label projects are creativity by committee, and you lose some of the essence of the magic.”

It was during the same period that Peck began to become involved in mindfulness and the wellness community. Incorporating his love of music and audio was a natural fit. “I had begun exploring spatial audio, and the possibilities really excited me. It led me to begin exploring sound not from a music or performance perspective, but more as a sonic landscape. Sound is an essential component in the self-exploration experience. The immersive element, done right, adds a whole new dimension to it.”

While he’s been involved for several years in creating content for numerous festivals, events, and museum exhibitions, it was his growing fascination with immersive audio that led to the creation of the Dojo, a 22-channel ambisonic space that also serves as Peck’s recording and composition studio and sound lab. “It’s a beautiful space that was built without a real business plan,” he concedes. “I mainly just knew if I wanted to get into spatial sound, I needed an instrument – which is this room – to even begin to understand its potential.”

Audio in the space comes from an iMac Pro, running through RME MADIface I/O units into a 20.2 system using Focal Solo6 Be powered monitors. “It’s a 21-foot diameter circular space, with all the speakers hidden in the walls, so it’s all part of the acoustics of the room,” he explains. “We’ve got eight speakers in the walls, eight more in what I’m calling an oculus, overhead, and four more in the middle. The walls are all designed with dif-sorbers – diffusion and absorption – like a typical bass trap you’d find in the back of a mix room, but on every wall. It’s all wood, so there’s still a lot of vividness and natural ambience to it. You can really play with blankets and rugs on the floors and walls to play with reflections.”

Once the space became a reality, it opened the door to myriad other possibilities. The Dojo has become a nexus for the wellness community, with private and public events held year round. “We can hold eight to ten people in the space,” Peck reports. “It’s a great space to explore sound and space as a vehicle for change and a tool for exploring different states of consciousness, but we’re able to do so from a real scientific background, where the spatial component provides a larger canvas for not just expressing, but experiencing dimensionality.”

The sonic landscapes Peck creates incorporate both synthesis and natural sounds, including Himalayan singing bowls and other ancient instruments. “We’re using both ancient and new technology to create a rich tapestry of frequencies and overtones and harmonics that invite judicious listening and active participation on so many different levels.”

All the immersive content is designed using SPAT “I’ve been working with SPAT since it came out. The intuitive nature of the program itself – the thoughtfulness, the workflow – they’re so far ahead of anyone else. I’ve experimented with a number of immersive platforms, but what FLUX is doing is a whole other level of realism and professionalism.”

Peck continues to create sonic content for other events and exhibition spaces as well, and SPAT is a critical tool in that process too. “One area where SPAT really shines is the ease with which I can convert content from my space to other site-specific builds. I can create 3D virtual spaces and encode and decode them easily. I’ve easily moved from binaural to a 16-channel, 700-person immersive ocean dive meditation event under the great whale exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, without having to do a whole lot of reprogramming. What was really wonderful was that I could go home, work on a room’s design, and then easily decode it for the space. Of course, you always have to work in the space to fine tune it, but SPAT enabled me to do a lot of the design work in advance.”

For Peck, the immersive environment is more than merely an art form – it’s a life-changing endeavor. “I’ve learned so much about the psychoacoustics of immersive audio. The impact of different frequencies and overtones on the human psyche is just the beginning. The ability to locate those sounds dramatically intensifies the experience of how we relate to the emotions behind the sounds. With a bit of ‘pre-flight’ guidance on the art of deep listening, it can become a tremendously empowering vehicle for people.”

The response within the mindfulness community has been overwhelmingly positive, Peck reports. “These are fascinating times. People are discovering sound as an important vehicle to experience a therapeutic space. There’s a real hunger for it. We’ve been working with other facilities who are looking to build therapeutic spaces too, and I always recommend SPAT to people getting into immersive sound design.”

Indeed, Peck asserts, FLUX is the ideal partner for exploring this new and largely unchartered territory. “There are very few people doing immersive right now, and even fewer doing it well. Some companies get lost in the technology. FLUX seems to have really nailed the balance between tech and creative. With SPAT, FLUX is building software that is not just cool for creating artistic effects – they are building something that really empowers the wellness space/community. They are my go-to platform for this kind of work.”

Sound Dojo loudspeaker and Multi-Channel Systems Design by Terence Caulkins from Arup.

http://www.thedojoupstate.com/

Los Angeles, CA – March 2020…

Like many audio professionals, Braeger Moore started out as a performing musician before turning his attention to recording and audio engineering. A native of Texas, he graduated from Texas Tech, then attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Phoenix, where he met future business and creative partner Nate Greene. The two migrated to Los Angeles in 2013 and opened a small recording studio, mostly producing, mixing, and mastering records for hip hop and indy artists.

Although the studio proved profitable, Moore and Greene sought new challenges. When they met Clay Schmitt in 2017, the pieces fell into place, and the three partners formed Canopy LA, a sound studio focused on developing immersive audio for interactive, story-driven experiences. It wasn’t long before Moore’s position as Technical Director and Audio Technologist led him to FLUX::Immersive’s Spat Revolution real-time 3D audio mixing software.

“We were interested in immersive audio for sound design, film, games, and installs,” Moore recalls, “and installs caught our attention first. We wanted to work with director Adam Amaral of Master of Shapes but he was working with game engines, and we didn’t have experience with that.” To learn the tools, Moore designed a game, in collaboration with his two partners. They showed the game to Amaral, who agreed to work with them. That was Canopy LA’s entrée into installation work.

By late 2018, Moore was looking for the best way to tap into complex speaker arrays, including nontraditional ones. “I picked up Spat Revolution and learned my way around it, with help from FLUX::Immersive,” he relates. “Then a project came along for Facebook/Oculus where we had the opportunity to use Spat to achieve our vision.”

The project was a temporary install for an event at the historic Los Angeles Theatre. “People showed up to watch a movie and had no idea what was about to happen,” recounts Moore. “Previews start to roll, it looks like a normal commercial for a game, and then all of a sudden — boom!— the commercial explodes out from the front screen and lights up the entire roof, the sides, and all the way behind people. We showed immersive commercials for four different games, which required a combination of projection mapping of the entire theater in 360° in conjunction with holograms at the very front.”

The three-level venue seats more than 2,000 people. “We’d never done anything that huge before,” Moore discloses. “We knew we would use a lot of speakers and high channel counts, and we wanted to address each of the speakers discretely. Spat Revolution is the best and most intelligent choice for that. Spat is great to work with. You can design the layout specifically and modify it creatively. You have a bunch of different algorithms to choose from, and certain objects and motions suit different use cases. There are no boundaries to Spat except computing power, and it runs on a Mac or Windows PC. I shopped around for spatial audio solutions, and one person wanted $40,000 for a standalone hardware unit; that will never work for us.”

The Facebook/Oculus project didn’t use conventional commercials with voiceover. “The idea was to put you in the game,” clarifies Moore. “A good example of using Spat, and one of the most impressive for the people experiencing it, was the commercial for a game called Moss. This serpent starts in the front of the screen and crawls all the way around the back of the theater, crawling through the walls and being hidden and then exposed, so you know he’s around you. Then he shows up back at the front of the screen and roars. We had 25 discrete addressable channels of audio, so as the serpent crawled around behind people, we tied the sound to the motion, so you hear him moving through rocks and making creepy noises and that sort of stuff. The sound varies as he’s moving through the different surfaces and areas. It was super fun.”

In another commercial, a discus flies around the room and bounces off the walls. “That was one where I wish we had more speakers but Spat definitely helped that sound of bouncing around the room,” Moore states. “We did different effects for each area.”

Moore can’t imagine accomplishing this type of project without Spat. “Doing a smaller array that sums a lot of speakers into left and right wouldn’t be nearly as effective,” he notes. “And rendering each channel individually would be impossible. With Spat, each speaker was accounted for in the model and carried the correct part of the program. We’re usually working on really tight timelines, and the hugest optimization we implemented was using Spat to deal with the entire mix all at once.”

Canopy LA also used Spat at a recent Verizon off-site Super Bowl celebration. “The part involving Spat was unplanned until the day before launch,” muses Moore. “The main experience was a 7.1 presentation in a dome, which we did. The day before it went live, the client asked us to design sound for the hallway leading into the dome, using ten speakers down the hallway. So I created a Spat session at home, modeled the hallway, and designed effects emulating going out into a stadium. At the front of the hallway was a loud crowd, and as you got toward the back of the hallway it became a reverberating, less present crowd so it felt like you were getting further away but with the echoes of the hallway. Spat was perfect for that. And we did it in one night. Anybody else probably would have turned that down but with Spat, we could do it. My team and I love Spat because it makes high-channel-count, custom projects possible, and we can do them quickly.”