When Swedish jazz pianist and composer Jacob Karlzon made his album Wanderlust in Dolby Atmos, he wasn’t certain that its immersive experience could be translated to a live performance. The 2022 Aalener Jazzfest, held at the Stadthalle Aalen in Germany, demonstrated that it could.

d&b Soundscape provided the festival goers an immersive audio experience using the company’s V and T Series loudspeaker systems. d&b’s En-Scene processing gave object-based mixing to provide localisation and imaging while En-Space provided an in-line room emulation tool using reverberation signatures to place the players in an acoustic environment.

Karlzon calls his musical style ‘technorganic’, balancing musical ideas with soundscapes ranging from light to energetic, fragile to powerful, organic to electronic.

‘I was completely blown away by Soundscape, there are so many advantages to using it,’ he says. ‘Soundscape blends two different worlds that I love to combine – organic acoustic sound and high-performance technology. With Soundscape, you really hear the music from where the piano is placed, not from the speakers – the listening and performance environment we were able to create was transformative.

‘As an artist, you’re completely depending on the energy from the audience. And with Soundscape, the audience feels like they are part of the whole performance, because they experience it from exactly where things are, rather than just from two loudspeakers,’ he adds.

With Soundscape’s localisation, audiences can focus solely on the artist. Regardless of their positioning, the audience will receive the same experience – with no dissonance of hearing a performer in one place and seeing them on stage in another.

Not only did Soundscape change the way Karlzon thinks about performing, he says it has also changed how he composes. ‘Now I have the opportunity to think about creating different kinds of landscapes, movement, and placements of different sounds, so it is very inspiring.’

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