The inaugural Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre exhibition, India in Fashion: The Impact of Indian Dress and Textiles on the Fashionable Imagination, in Mumbai has been lauded both for its scale and its engagement. Munro Acoustics Director Kapil Thirwani was responsible for the audio, which required immersive soundscapes that segued from zone to zone within the exhibition space. Calling on distributor, Alphatec, he looked to the capabilities of TiMax SoundHub to meet the complexity of brief.
A multi-zone exploration into the impact of India on global fashion and vice versa, the exhibition was curated by Vogue Global Editor Hamish Bowles. Required to deliver the audio systems in an eye-wateringly tight timeframe, Thirwani had just enough time to fly to the ISE show in Barcelona to discuss the project in detail with Out Board.
‘Alphatec showed Kapil various ways TiMax could handle this project, which involved playing spatial music and effects across 15 zones, starting and stopping it all automatically without anybody having to touch it,’ explains Out Board Director, Dave Haydon. ‘He worked out that TiMax was the only thing that could do it all at once.’
The installation used two 64 I/O TiMax SoundHub-S64s each handling half of the exhibition, playing out a mix of stereo and multi-stem spatial music, as well as soundscape tracks to 128 Genelec 4430 IP loudspeakers located across 15 zones. Both brands are distributed by Alphatec.
The Genelec 4430 is a small, powerful, Smart IP installation loudspeaker which, like TiMax connects to a Dante network and supports external control via third-party hardware and software. Each running on a single Cat5 cable, the active Genelec loudspeakers were not only discreet but provided a preferable alternative to the use of 20km of expensive and hard-to-conceal copper wiring.
The soundscapes used in the individual exhibition zones were created by Goa-based musicians, Sandunes. With some multichannel spatial audio tuition from Haydon to hand, the duo created the audio content in the same key to prevent clashes when transitioning from one zone to another – a technique often used is gaming audio. Various show content stems were sent to the UK where Haydon began programming the showfiles, subsequently visiting Mumbai to help Sandunes bed in the immersive content on-site.
Without walls separating the exhibits, some sound spill was unavoidable, but once the audio installation was complete, the team started auditioning the soundscapes, walking from zone to zone with a Mac to fine-tune them.
Following this process all the settings were saved and the SoundHubs locked. Set to fade up at 10am, and then slowly fade out at the end of the day, simplified client control for the TiMax-controlled system was provided via a TouchOSC iPad for each SoundHub. Changes could be made to master level and individual zone levels for out-of-hours VIP visits, press and TV interviews without impacting the saved set-up.
Arriving at the completed project shortly before it opened to the public, Haydon said: ‘The integration and design were amazing, and all the equipment was up and running to provide totally automated, hands-free, fully integrated show-in-a-box operation.’
Giving testament to the stability of the TiMax system and its ease of use, Thirwani adds, ‘The entire show ran for two months with no issues at all.’
