Live streaming with mixing in Sonic Emotion’s Wave Field ... · The compact speakers APG DX8 were associated with 4 APG subwoofers SB 115 for low frequency rendering located on

PRESS RELEASE - La Cenerentola on Sonic Emotion’s Wave1 – Rennes FR June 2015

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Live streaming with mixing in Sonic Emotion’s Wave Field Synthesis of La Cenerentola Opera by Rossini - Rennes 5th of June 2015 Back on a world premiere The opera of Rennes, with the support of the City of Rennes and Rennes Métropole, have extended their "Opera on screen" program in 2015 that was initiated in 2009 with Mozart's Don Giovanni. This year Rossini’s La Cenerentola was making the headline. This joyful and compelling work is a version of Cinderella revisited by his librettist Jacopo Ferretti. The staging of Jerome Savary ensured a good humor, and the work was well served by the Symphony Orchestra of Brittany, led by Darrell Ang, accompanying a team of singers whose talent vocalists vies with that of actors in this crazy vision of Cinderella. The opera was broadcasted live on large screens in various sites of the Brittany region and also on television, radio and in new formats, such as web streaming and other immersive environments. The event included as usual many innovative components, tablet applications combining image and sound with additional information and alternative shots, binaural streaming and live remix in Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) in a room equipped for the occasion. Why WFS? What does it bring compared to stereo? Unlike stereo that works for a handful of listeners correctly positioned relative to the speakers, WFS allows for greater listening comfort for a wide area of listeners. It is on this year exclusive exercise and never even realized before that we intend to detail here. To understand the entire workflow and address the specifics related to each of its components, let’s start with singers and musicians playing in the orchestra pit and on stage the opera. In the opera and Radio France’s OB Van Each singer was equipped with a wireless microphone, hidden in her hair and dress, in order to ensure close miking discreetly. An array of microphones is arranged at the frontal part of the stage and a set of suspended microphones in the theater ceiling allowed to capture the atmosphere of the stage and the room. Additionally, a rather traditional microphone ensemble was deployed in the pit to capture the sounds of the orchestra. No specific microphone ensemble devoted to the Wave Field Synthesis reproduction has been implemented. All microphone signals were routed to a stage box located on stage, which performs analog to digital conversion and transfers the signals to the OB Van through a digital link. A tandem consisting of Cyril Bécue, Sound Engineer at Radio France, and the Musician Vincent Villetard operated the mixing desk. Together they provided several mixes simultaneously. Their console provided both a stereo and a 5.1 mix, sent to the various broadcasters. Cyril Bécue participated to all past retransmissions operations on screens organized by the opera of Rennes since 2009 and actively promoted the use of WFS for this year’s edition. From the mixer also left an audio stream through MADI optical fiber, including all the post fader signals from the microphones, that was used for WFS mixing. The interest of using post-fader signals is obviously that they are somehow "ready to use". They actually benefit from all the preprocessing that would be redundant to perform a second time such as frequency equalization and level adjustment.


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This set of signals was transferred to the Hubert Curien room, the conference room of the complex Les Champs Libres located one kilometer away from the opera. A Riedel MediorNet modulator first adapted the digital signals to be transported on one of many optical fibers that equip permanently the metropolis of Rennes and interconnect its main public places and cultural venues. In the Hubert Curien romm of the complex Les Champs Libres At the receiving end, in the machine room, a demodulator MediorNet restored a MADI stream over fiber, able to supply the processing and distribution chain in WFS, through a RME MADIface digital audio interface. The redundancy of the signals was operated by a second optical fiber to the Champs Libres through a set of modulator / demodulator Broaman alimenting the RME MADIface sound card on its coaxial input connection.

Rehearsal in Hubert Curien room

Now, let’s examine the sound processing chain for WFS mixing and diffusion. The optical and coaxial MADI streams thus alimented the RME MADIface soundcard, connected to a rackmount PC operating the DAW (Nuendo, Steinberg). This work allowed the spatial arrangement of sounds recorded from the same performance that happened the day before. On the very event, the channels were switched from the recording to live inputs. The second team of Radio France was composed of Frédéric Changenet, Sound Engineer, and the Musician Elsa Biston. Frédéric is a enthusiastic user of WFS at Radio France. He has used all the experience he has acquired in the studio 105 of the “Maison de la Radio” as well as in other places, such as the studio 104 with outstanding radio dramas and concerts or at the Pasteur Hall at the Corum in Montpellier where he has installed during the 2014 edition of the Montpellier Radio France Festival a Sonic Emotion WFS system for conferences and spatialized concerts that remained in the memories of attendees. While the MADI stream from the OB van was carrying 40 audio trading, Elsa and Fred have managed to reduce to 32 the number of channels through a 8.0 bus that contain certain sources such as ambient microphones and some ambient sound elements such as sound


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effects elements in order to fulfill the requirements of the Sonic Emotion Wave I processor. The Nuendo session also allowed managing an additional room effect to enhance the sensation of envelopment, through an artificial reverberation distributed over the 8.0 bus. The 32 audio channels were then routed to the MADI inputs of Sonic Emotion’s Wave I processor. The 32 outputs signals are generated by the Wave 1 processor and delivered through the MADI outputs as alimentation channels for the loudspeakers positioned around the room. A Direct Out Technologies Andiamo converter realized the digital to analog conversion of the MADI signals that were amplified by Powersoft amplifiers Ottocanali 4K4. Frederic had installed around the audience in the pit of the Hubert Curien room 26 loudspeakers through which WFS can create real "sound holograms" that the Musician Elsa and the sound engineer Frederic positioned to their will in the sound space. Like so, every member of the audience perceive the musician or comedian exactly where it was chosen to be heard, regardless of their location in the room. Unlike all spatial sound rendering systems previously available, with which the sound comes from the speaker closest to the listener, WFS allows a perfect fit between what we hear and what we see. The show was primarily frontal, with video projection of the television broadcast. The front soundstage was therefore equipped with the best resolution. In the speaker layout chosen for the Hubert Curien room, the frontal area had a greater density than for speakers on the sides or rear. The additional side and rear loudspeakers were used primarily for spatial rendering of the room effect through which WFS allows to create very convincing acoustic spaces, enveloping the audience, and causing increased immersion of the audience in the artists' world. The compact speakers APG DX8 were associated with 4 APG subwoofers SB 115 for low frequency rendering located on stage, providing an as realistic spectral rendering for the piccolo as for the double bass section. These loudspeakers are particularly suited for WFS. Their co-axial design, balanced frequency and dynamic response, and the anti-diffraction baffling that prevents frequency response accidents off axis are all beneficial to WFS and sound quality delivered by the system. Moreover, Sonic Emotion and APG have co-developed manufacturer loudspeaker presets (DX, SMX, MX loudspeakers and SB subs) that can be directly loaded into the Wave I avoiding the need for external DSP units.

Elsa Biston, Musician, Cyril Bécue and Frédéric Changenet

Sound Engineers Radio France


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Moving sound sources The movement of the actors on the stage of the theater was reproduced by moving the sound holograms in real time, depending on the evolution of music. Which brings to the mix a new dramatic dimension also demanded a phase of preparation and rehearsals, which involved Frederic, the sound engineer and Elsa, the Musician, during the two days preceding the representation of Friday, June the 5th. Frederick has selected a compact and efficient technical solution for mixing with only a DAW and a soundcard. This decision is justified for several reasons, the main one is the low grip on the spectator area. Second, the sound sources benefiting from a pre-mix (actually more than that, but let's say pre-mixing within the meaning of WFS) made in the OB van by Cyril Bécue, the presence of a mixing console was not really necessary. Only channel levels, occasionally their timbre, needed to be overworked. Finally, Frederic relied on the features of the Wave Performer, the GUI for live monitoring and interaction with source positions from Sonic Emotion. He preferred to use a simple mouse rather than the multi touch tablet application, the latter being more oriented at the time of the Rennes operation to the management of mobile sources in the context of electronic music rather than opera. One would also deploy an automated system for tracking positions of the sources, as was the case at the Piccolo Teatro for the play La Celestina in 2014; time related installation constraints have tipped the balance towards this quick and altogether effective solution. The movements of singers were quite manageable with the mouse.

Suivi de positions des sources dans l'interface Performer

A delighted audience One of the great achievements of the staging were very harmonious sets where the (very good) singers were grouped into coherent ensembles in a spatial distribution that the Wave Field Synthesis reproduced to the audience of the Hubert Curien room at Les Champs Libres with great fidelity. It should also be noted that the television production, due to Denis Caïozzi, lent itself well to the development space of sound sources without insoluble conflict between visual and audible information.


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The audience testified to the technical team of great listening comfort and expressed their thanks through proven joy in the presence of a technical device that is at the service of the artistic intention and is transparent enough to carry the emotions.

The audience at Hubert Curien room of Les Champs Libres before the start of the show

Radio France and the upcoming developments Radio France is involved with the development of Sonic Emotion’s Wave Field Synthesis through the research project funded by the National Research Agency "Edison3D". The consortium, coordinated by Sonic Emotion Labs in Paris, includes major players such as "Audio, Acoustics and Waves" and "Interaction, Cognition and Complexity" labs at Telecom ParisTech, the Ecole Polytechnique, the University of Western Brittany and the IRT B-Com. The key element of this project is the use of an object-oriented description of sounds that is a paradigm shift in the world of audio that allows dissociating the production format from the reproduction format. The listener thus has the best rendering possible whatever its listening mode (loudspeaker, headphones, soundbars, …).


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Improvements and progress remains to be done of course, but Radio France, through the experiment in Rennes in June 2015, showed the way to a possible evolution of broadcasting shows to a remote large audience. This will question the relevance of having a main microphone device specifically devoted to WFS. It is for sound engineers a new challenge to question proven practices of classical stereo or multi-channel recording, and suggest areas for improvement by feeding the WFS system, in addition to close to microphones, with more suitable sound field capture devices. Will these take form of Ambisonics microphone antennas, possibly of higher order? Revised surround microphone placement? Modify mixing practices or add additional post-processing? New fields of experimentation open to sound engineers, providing the audience with ever more interesting sensations. The sound comfort of spectators remains a major topic since Sonic Emotion has shown the way with its Wave I processor. Links Sonic Emotion, manufacturer of the Wave I processor http://www2.sonicemotion.com/professional/ APG, manufacturer of the loudspeakers http://www.apg.audio/fr/ Edison 3D, the research project sponsored by the French Agency of Research http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/?Projet=ANR-13-CORD-0008 Euphonia, the distributor of the Wave I processor http://www.euphonia.fr Radio France http://www.radiofrance.fr Some example projects involving Radio France WFS technique: concert fiction loosely based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, with an original score given by the Orchestre National de France on 26th and 27th June 2015: http://maisondelaradio.fr/evenement/concert-fiction/dracula-de-bram-stoker/un-concert-fiction-librement-adapte-par-stephane electro music content for this performance with projection of a montage sequences with sound by WFS Sonic Emotion, Tuesday, June 23rd at Studio 104 of the Radio House, as part of SEQUENCE, Electronic Live Sessions, a joint creation of Radio France France Télévisions on a proposal MILGRAM Productions: http://maisondelaradio.fr/evenement/evenement-exceptionnel/sequences-electronic-live-sessions/soiree-evenement-autour-de John Greaves sings Verlaine in this broadcast show with an audience “Le Temps d'une Chanson” Saturday, April 25th, 2015, at Studio 105 of the Maison de la Radio. The concert was using Sonic Emotion’s WFS. During this exceptional concert organized for the release of the record, John Greaves is surrounded by Elise Caron (vocals), Jeanne Added (vocals), Thomas Pourquery (vocals), William Roy (viola), Olivier Mellano (guitar), Régis Boulard (drums) and Eve Risser (piano): http://maisondelaradio.fr/evenement/emission-en-public/le-temps-dune-chanson-par-laurent-valero/john-greaves-chante-verlaine Radio Fiction: An adventure of Tom Sawyer, played by many actors, musicians and noisemakers, Saturday, Jan. 31st at Studio 104 http://www.maisondelaradio.fr/evenement/concert-spectacle/une-aventure-de-tom-sawyer/radio-en-scene An exceptional concert-fiction on the theme of Alice in Wonderland at the studio 104: http://www.franceculture.fr/emission-fictions-samedi-noir-alice-merveilles-2015-02-07 Links to photographs illustrating this article and others:


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http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3933-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3942-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3944-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3949-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3966-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3974-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3988-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3992-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF3993-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4001-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4002-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4004-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4007-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4009-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4011-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4016-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4020-‐v.jpg http://arnault.damien.free.fr/LaCenerentola/DSCF4024-‐v.jpg Higher resolution pictures are available on demand. Arnault Damien - Euphonia Etienne Corteel – Sonic Emotion Labs June 2015

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Live streaming with mixing in Sonic Emotion’s Wave Field ... · The compact speakers APG DX8 were associated with 4 APG subwoofers SB 115 for low frequency rendering located on