A 360-degree sound reinforcment system deployed at the iconic Odeon of Herodes Atticus amphitheatre in Athens, Greece, which dates back to the year 161 AD, for a first-ever joint live performance by producer and artist Brian Eno and his brother, pianist and composer Roger Eno, incorporated the Soundscape immersive audio platform from d&b audiotechnik.
“Due to the age and size of the amphitheater, I thought that it would be a real challenge to analyze how the sound spreads in the space, and how we would manage coverage and reflections,” explains front of house engineer Chris Hamilton. “Luckily, because it’s such a historic venue there has been a lot of studies done on it and someone had previously conducted a full audio study for the space, so we had great audio info to work with.”
Hamilton had previously been introduced to Soundscape by Massimo Carli of BH Audio and suggested to use it to achieve the desired result for this unique performance in a challenging outdoor venue. “I spoke with management about the opportunity we had to do something really special here and something that no one has done before,” he says. “The challenge was more reassuring them that this will be simple, easy to install, and reliable — and the audience won’t even know it’s there, but they will hear it. We definitely took a risk together, but there was trust and the results spoke for themselves.”
d&b Soundscape is powered by the DS100 Signal Engine, an audio system processor based on a Dante-enabled signal matrix, working with En-Scene and En-Space software modules. En-Scene is a sound object positioning tool allowing for the individual placement and movement of up to 64 sound objects, designed to accurately stage scenarios so that each sound object corresponds both visually and acoustically. En-Space is an in-line room emulation tool that creates and modifies reverberation signatures for any space, with the emulations derived from acoustic measurements of nine noted performance venues and convolved within the audio processor.
“After the show, everyone was beaming and saying how good it sounded,” Hamilton notes. “The future for me is all about spatial audio tools such as Soundscape. Soundscape helped me build not just volume but spread and movement as the show built. The clarity you get compared to a standard L/R setup is wonderful. It’s definitely something I’m looking to bring in for more shows with other artists in the future.”
In addition to Soundscape, d&b components utilized on the project include V8/V12 loudspeakers, V-SUB subwoofers, V10P loudspeakers, and DS10 network bridge interfaces.
