Germany - The 6K United 2024 You are Precious tour took place recently at some of Germany’s foremost arena venues, including the Munich Olympic Hall and the Hamburg Barclay Arena. This music project, which has run for a number of years, brought together the voices of six thousand children, who after months of independently rehearsing material specially created for them, came together as one to sing an entire concert repertoire for spellbound audiences.
Accompanied by a 16-piece backing band, the choir delivered a wide range of musical styles prepared under the guidance of Professor Fabian Sennholz of Frankfurt University of Music.
Audio technology is clearly an essential element of an undertaking of this size and scale, and this year saw new standards set by specialists Melodus, a company created in 2023 by the merger of expert practitioners Tschotow Audio and Tobias Berlet Sound-Stage-Instruments.
Headed by co-managing director Oli Tschotow, the Melodus team introduced Coda Audio’s immersive audio system Space Hub, deploying the unit to implement near-field sound. Space Hub is a 19”/3U immersive processor which allows designers to create audio experiences in three dimensions, incorporating up to 128 audio sources rendered into 128 outputs to create an evolving, immersive listening experience. Space Hub’s deployment was a great success according to Tschotow:
“With an immersive audio system, you simply have more ‘space’ in the mix than with a traditional stereo or mono near-field sound system. The audience hears the artists at the position they occupy in the stage – that’s what characterises the immersive 3D listening experience.”
For the 6K United tour, the Bad Hersfeld-based team used Coda Audio Space Hub as an immersive processor with 24 sources for near-field sound. No additional equipment such as audio converters was required with Oli Tschotow explaining that what might appear technically demanding was made quite straightforward:
“The Hub created an acoustic front from 11 front-fill loudspeakers on which we could position the artists. It was the perfect ‘plug and play’ solution – a Dante interface with 128/128 channels made integration a piece of cake! The processor enables a truly impressive sound experience and makes our job easier. My expectations of Space Hub were far exceeded.”
Sebastian Baehr of Coda Audio adds: “One of the important qualities of Space Hub is the variety and simplicity of its integration options. On this occasion artists on the stage were equipped with zactrack Smart nodes that had been assigned to their respective audio objects. As a result, the localisation of sources on the front-fills was absolutely precise and coherent with what happened on stage without the need for an operator working within the Hub’s control software. In this way it was virtually latency-free as no-one had to respond to movement on stage and move objects correspondingly. The integration of tracking systems via OSC interface is ultra-reliable and significantly reduces the burden on operators.”
