The UAE’s 2022 National Day was staged in a purpose-built 100m long enclosed arena with seating along both sides, taking the audience on a generational journey of the UAE’s pioneers – transported from sea to space using stunning projection-mapped visuals, supported by spatial audio effects delivered by TiMax SoundHub.
TiMax SoundHub spatial processing for the event was specified by Auditoria sound designer Scott Willsallen for its ability to control and place the many diverse audio sources used, which included a live orchestra and music playback, as well as spatialised soundfield effect elements, to support the action provided by projection mapping, lighting, actors, processions and floats.
The capabilities of TiMax proved essential to link the sounds associated with the moving performance to the scenic media elements as the procession travelled through, including parts of the musical score from a playback server, as well as spot sound effects from TiMax.
To program movement against the music playback’s audio timeline, individual stem tracks were temporarily imported into TiMax so that movement and spatialisation of external server content could be programmed directly against the audio waveforms. For soundfield effects elements, individual effects stems were imported to and played back from the TiMax SoundHub’s onboard 64-channel playback engine for spatialisation.
A distributed system comprising 26 groundstacked L-Acoustics loudspeakers and a further 26 flown, supported by four end arrays and distributed sub bass units, was loaded into the geometrically aware TiMax PanSpace. TiMax’s PanSpace automatically and selectively calculated the levels and delays for the different layers of TiMax Image Definition objects, defined to suit various combinations of spatial scenaria required for the show.
A set of spatial pans, programmed in the PanSpace environment were collected into templates to be copied and pasted over the audio waveforms in the TimeLine environment. This action allowed synchronisation to be applied quickly within specific cues as they arose during technical rehearsals. This flexible workflow approach was vital to accommodate content changes and creative production variances to be accommodated at short notice.
The sound control room for the event was located remotely from the arena space. To accommodate this, dedicated TiMax outputs were allocated to provide control room spatial monitoring that matched the spatial placements and movements of content in the actual arena.
A separate networked TiMax client control computer was located at the arena space during rehearsals. Using this, Wilsallen and OutBoard’s Robin Whittaker, on-site in Abu Dhabi to assist with TiMax set-up and spatial programming, audited and selected the most effective spatial events for hard programming into the show. The consequent TiMax cues were assigned OSC commands to be triggered from the main show playback server.
‘It was great to be involved with a production of such magnitude and significance, and with the invaluable support of the Agora and Auditoria audio teams,’ Whittaker says. ‘And thankfully the flexible TiMax workflow made it easy to rapidly program and audition highly-effective spatial events to meet the show’s fluid and diverse creative challenges as they arose.’
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