Soundscape under the stars at Odeon of Herodes
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Brian Eno’s reputation as a musician, and producer for the likes of David Bowie, U2 and Talking Heads, precedes him as well as his long career as a pioneering solo artist, especially in the field of ambient music. He recently collaborated with his brother, Roger Eno, a solo recording artist and film and TV music composer and released their first ever joint album Mixing Colours, a project that spawned this live show.
Their first live performance as a duo took place in open-air performance space, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, a renovated stone amphitheatre originally constructed in the year 161 AD.
“Due to the age and size of the amphitheatre, I thought that it would be a real challenge to analyse how the sound spreads in the space, and how we would manage coverage and reflections,” commented Chris Hamilton, front of house engineer. “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 power and clarity for this challenging outdoor venue and make this historic musical moment an unforgettable experience for the audience.
“I spoke with management about the opportunity we had to do something really special here and something that no one has done before,” said Hamilton. “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 powerful Dante-enabled signal matrix and provides unparalleled creativity through its two software modules En-Scene and En-Space.
d&b En-Scene is a sound object positioning tool allowing for the individual placement and movement of up to 64 sound objects. It accurately depicts stage scenarios so that each sound object corresponds both visually and acoustically. d&b En-Space is an in-line room emulation tool which creates and modifies reverberation signatures for any space. These reverberation signatures are emulations derived from acoustic measurements of nine internationally renowned performance venues and convolved within the audio processor.
For many, including Hamilton, this was their first show back since restrictions had been lifted, so anticipation was high. That being said, the audio and performance was well received with fans and the band alike praising the show.
“After the show, everyone was beaming and saying how good it sounded,” Hamilton remembers. “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.”
“There is nothing like experiencing 360-degree audio for the first time and having introduced Chris to Soundscape a while back in our studio in Italy I’m pleased he finally got to try it out in the ‘real’ world - and with such compelling results,” concludes Carli.
