If I think back over many years in AV, I notice something. My most memorable experiences have something in common: spatial audio. Even an anechoic chamber is in its way spatial. In 2011, standing on the Yamaha booth in headphones when the Dan Dugan automixer card debuted felt “spatial” in the way it shaped the audio space in my head and vanished the distractions.
I remember one Meyer demo that was set up to be like a nightclub (I think it might have been for LEO?) where I had that experience of hearing the music at full resolution but still being able to hear the person standing next to me. That’s not spatial in the electronically manipulated sense, but to me, it was a powerful reminder that all audio is spatial, it’s just whether it’s shaped by intention or accident. That shape has an impact on the audio experience, and it also affects the relationships among the people sharing the room
One my top three most significant AV adventures was of spatial audio. In 2011, I sat with Meyer’s Steve Ellison as the Cirque du Soleil team mixed the Kodak theater for Iris. A Meyer Constellation system had been installed to help bring life to the dry broadcast soundstage, which wasn’t just neutralizing reflections; it was also neutralizing the performer/audience interaction.
In that long evening, I understood a part of spatial audio that is about more than the thrill of having audio move about a room or shape a space. Those things are amazing and I love them. But there’s something else too. Active acoustics and spatial audio change how it feels to be in community. For the Cirque du Soleil performers, the Kodak’s bone-dry atmosphere was killing the clowns because it was inhibiting the audience. People couldn’t hear each other laugh, so they didn’t laugh. They felt alone and vulnerable if they reacted. They weren’t getting cues from their fellow participants. They were isolated in a room packed with people.
In the 14 years since that special evening, a lot has happened in spatial technologies—I’ve been able to hear d&b Soundscape and L-Acoustics L-ISA in a wide variety of demos and settings. Holoplot at Sphere. Steve Ellison got to bring Spacemap Go to fruition at Meyer. For me, this development is quite magical both as science and art.
So, when it came time to do our October Worship Issue, I started to wonder about spatial audio in church, where community is everything. I went looking for examples and I found them. Not surprisingly, in each case, the users made the same point: these technologies drew people in and drew people together. Once you experience that you can’t unhear it, and you don’t forget it.
Ironically, I grew up attending a church that had no audio reinforcement other than the architectural properties of adobe clay and clever colonial architecture. As a kid, I didn’t realize that the Mission Santa Barbara was acoustically great; I just knew how it felt and took it for granted. I attributed the feeling to the gathering of people and the fun of watching my dad’s band play at the folk mass or hearing the choir at the Latin high mass my grandmother preferred. Good acoustics, and now spatial audio, are tools to make that human creativity connect in, to wrap around people, and move them. I think those types of audio experiences have been some of the most powerful forces of human history, and I’m not being hyperbolic. I notice it now because it’s now in such contrast to the toxic elements of our binary online public spaces. Three-dimensional audio in a shared space is a timeless healer when you think about it. When you hear it, you know that in your bones. And not just in your ossicles.
