TECHNICAL FOCUS: AUDIO · TECHNICAL FOCUS: AUDIO party decoder to translate data for L-ISA. The...

College-Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnatirecently staged a production of the musical The SecretGarden that brought something new to the school’sCorbett Auditorium: L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Soundtechnology by L-Acoustics, working in tandem with CAST

BlackTrax. “This is the first time it’s been used in an aca-demic setting in the United States,” notes L-Acousticsapplication engineer Jordan Tani. (CCM offers one of thecountry’s leading musical theatre programs: Alumni includeKaren Olivo, Stephen Flaherty, Faith Prince, Tony Yazbeck,and Michele Pawk.) Key to the process were the project’sproduction partners: Loud and Clear, which is Cincinnati-based, and Mid-America Sound, based in Greenfield,Indiana, both of which provided equipment for the project.“Thanks to our certified providers,” Tani says, “they were

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Cultivating The Secret GardenBy: Sharon Stancavage

The production combined L-ISA technology with CAST BlackTrax real-time tracking.

L-Acoustics’ L-ISA technology makes its academic debut

All photos: Mark Lyons

Copyright Lighting&Sound America April/May 2020 issue live link: http://plasa.me/yqulm

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able to get the remainder of the gear for production inaddition to what L-Acoustics provided.”

The Secret Garden’s audio team—including mix engi-neer Corbin White and associate sound designer/systemengineer Eddy Mineishi—made a pilgrimage to L-Acoustics Americas’ headquarters to learn L-ISA technolo-gy. White notes, “When we went into Ocean [one of L-ISA’s playback solutions, designed for live entertainment]made me feel like I didn’t know anything about sound atall. For so long, we’ve settled for stereo; we have said, ‘It’snot the best, but this is what we’ve got and there is noth-ing we can do about it.’ L-Acoustics said, ‘No, we’re goingto do something about it’.” Mineishi adds, “We walked intothe LA office and it opened up a huge world of sound thatI had not experienced before. I have been to other testfacilities and training sessions, but this one was extra spe-cial; there were so many opportunities to learn, not onlyabout L-ISA, but also about the behavior of sound as itpropagates in different environments.”L-ISA training took three days. “For me, the learning

curve was fairly easy,” Mineishi says. “The only real chal-lenge was learning the quirks and behaviors of the remotesoftware, but that took just a couple hours of pokingaround.” White had a similar experience: “By the time weleft, I felt pretty comfortable in the L-ISA Controller. Iunderstood how things were working and what we weregetting ourselves into.” For The Secret Garden, “The L-ISA frontal system was

two ARCS Wide [line source elements] per array, for a totalof five arrays, and it covered the house quite well,” Tanisays. “Due to the 30° vertical dispersion of each of theARCs Wides, only two elements were needed in each forcoverage of the house. To obtain the same vertical cover-age with smaller line array elements, we would need atleast six per array, which significantly increases theamount of gear needed in addition to limitations of trimheight and rigging constraints. We had two KS21 subs thatwere hung off-center from the center array.”Initially, the sound design was a straightforward L-ISA

scene configuration. “Over time,” Tani says, “we had dis-cussions about what [sound] designer Zachory Ivans want-ed to do creatively. It then evolved from a scene configura-tion to also include adding surrounds and overheads. Thisallowed us to place effects, adding into the room engine,which allows us to really envelop the audience in the worldof the music.” For the surround system, there were eightSyva cabinets behind the theatre’s architectural sconces—four per side—and eight X8 point sources for overheads.The latter “were in the catwalks,” Tani says, “aboveacoustical clouds and some paneling that is relativelytransparent. They were about 35' above the orchestralevel, pointing down, overlapping as much of the audienceas possible.” Along with the L-ISA system technology, which includes

the L-ISA Processor, the production used both AbletonLive and Qlab. “We had QLab acting as both effects play-back and control of Ableton Live and L-ISA,” Tani says.“QLab triggers Ableton to control these sound effects viaL-ISA Source control plug-ins. With the ability to drawautomation curves, we’re able to control the movement ina fluid manner, moving wind and rain effects through thesystem with ease. QLab also triggers snapshots within L-ISA to control simple movements during scene changes.L-ISA objects can be controlled with snapshots, plug-ins,external OSC, trackers, and on the desk [a DiGiCo SD10]with Desklink. We used all of these methods in conjunctionwith each other and L-ISA handled it without breaking asweat.”

Applying L-ISA to musical theatreIn terms of working with L-ISA, Mineishi notes, “Thething that catches anyone off guard when working with asystem like this for the first time is that the requirementsare totally different than a typical sound system.Typically, we manipulate groups of vocals in the consolethrough the use of bus channels, then we send thosebus channels to a matrix that routes to the PA. With L-ISA, you need to send discrete vocal and instrumentchannels into the processor, and then you need discreteoutputs to your speaker system.”“As a theatrical sound designer,” Mineishi says, “a huge

part of my system design reflects how many discrete out-puts I need for my QLab session. With L-ISA, we had tothink of how many discrete sounds we needed to play atone time and where those sounds needed to be playedfrom. Just like the vocal and instrument channels, youneed discrete QLab channels in L-ISA. Each QLab channelbecomes a sound object in L-ISA, which means thatinstead of using a number of fade cues to pan audioaround, we programmed a cue that moves the QLab chan-nel across any of the speakers.” White handled theAbleton programming. “L-ISA has been really reliable, andit was easy to integrate using the Ableton plug-in, whichwas very effective and made it easy to program and recordthe automation data,” he explains.The production included 16 BlackTrax beacons for the

actors. “We’ve used BlackTrax integration before, butnever on this scale,” Tani says. “BlackTrax told us that thiswas the greatest number of sound objects being controlledat one time in a system.” The BlackTrax beacons track theactors as they move through the space—both left/rightand upstage/downstage. It sends that data to L-ISA, whichputs the audio in the appropriate speakers. “BlackTrax hastheir RTTrP [Real-Time Tracking Protocol], which can besent to various third parties,” Tani says. “L-ISA has a built-in bridge application that takes the RTTrP protocol andintegrates it into the system. We don’t need to use a third-

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party decoder to translate data for L-ISA. The fusion was so natural, youcould close your eyes and knowwhere anyone was onstage at anytime. The PA simply faded away; itwas incredibly transparent.”Mixing with L-ISA has been a

unique experience for White. “This isthe first show that after mixing for anight, I walked away and my ears feltfine,” he says. “I never got notesabout making it louder. I had an easi-er time with fixing things in the mix; Ifelt like I could hear more and bal-ance things better.”Indeed, White used a minimum of

plug-ins. “We wanted to use a lotmore of the Waves plug-ins, but itwas a matter of time, and by the timewe got to them, we had a day left totech. There were a few members ofthe cast whom we had a hard timegetting down a good EQ; we had

“L-ISA has an integrated room engine, allowing you to create a reverb space that the objects inhabit,” Tani says. “We created differentspaces for each scene and song. We could be in the mansion in one scene and the garden the next, each with its characteristics anddecay times."

Left to right: Jordan Tani, Zach Ivans, Corbin White.

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problems with sibilance. We foundthe Waves dynamic EQs and the de-essers to be pretty effective at that.”Mineishi says, “The biggest chal-

lenges in implementing the system inour theatre were the time constraintsthat we were under and the numberof infrastructure lines we had.” Also,he says, “All this fancy technology isincredible, but one of the main con-cerns with new technology like this isif it takes extra time. The answer: no,it does not. In fact, on The SecretGarden, it saved us a lot of time thatwe normally take up in the venue withtuning and cueing. I can’t stressenough how easy it is to deploy an L-ISA system. Not only are the userinterfaces so easy to use, but youalso get amazing customer supportfrom the L-Acoustics team.”From a mix standpoint, L-ISA

changed the reverb game, so tospeak. “L-ISA has an integrated roomengine, allowing you to create areverb space that the objects inhab-it,” Tani says. “We created differentspaces for each scene and song. Wecould be in the mansion in one sceneand the garden the next, each with itscharacteristics and decay times. Inmusical theatre, normally, we createreverbs for the cast and orchestraand give control of their levels to themixer. To have that separate controland still take advantage of the inte-grated room engine, we createdreverb objects for actors, and thoseobjects track with them in space, nomatter where they go on the stage.Because it’s object-based, the reverbof Mary [the musical’s young heroine],for example, always tracks with her.So that way you will always hear herdry signal and her reverb will comeout of the system proportional towhere she moves onstage.” L-ISA affected the orchestra as

well. “In addition to the benefits oflocalization, from a mix perspectiverather than simply controlling vol-ume,” Tani says, “the orchestra canmove physically back in space, akinto a more natural underscoring. For

certain dialogue scenes, the orchestracan move relative to the actor’s loca-tion in regard to the content at hand.So, the orchestra might be at 20% or30% distance for the musical num-bers, letting the cast be clearly heardabove the orchestra, and then it couldmove to 50% distance during an inti-mate moment where you have a needfor underscoring.”

The Secret Garden had a cast of24, and White had 28 microphones,including backups. “They were on[Sennheiser] MKE1s,” he says; “Fortransmitters and receivers, we usedShure ULXD4Q [quad-channel wire-less digital receivers]. We also have aLectrosonics Venue 2 receiver andSSM Micro belt-track transmitters; wehave only four channels and typicallyuse those to double-mic the leads.”For the orchestra, ”We used a mix ofDPA 4061s and 4099s on the stringson the harp, Cascade Fatheads onthe horns, and Sennheiser MD431son trombone and trumpet.”While L-ISA is a natural on the

stage, White sees other applicationsfor it: “We’ve talked about doing itagain with theatre, and we’ve alsotalked about doing it with opera or asreinforcement for an orchestra; it’sfantastic on an orchestra. I also think

it’s great for electronic music whereyou have dense, complex textures.For theatre and voice, it’s a bit moreobvious that it’s useful because it’sspoken language that we’re clearingup, and there’s a more definitivemeaning attached to human words.Instrumental music is just as full ofmeaning, though; there are phrases,motifs, and whole voices that sooften get lost in stereo or mono. Itmight not be as apparent at firstbecause we don’t have a way totranslate those things into words.”Tani has nothing but positive

things to say about the sound stu-dents at CCM. “They have all beenquick to adapt to the new technology,and it’s been great working with themon the process. They are all equallytalented and quick on their feet totroubleshoot if issues arise; these stu-dents are the future engineers,designers, and techs of our industry,and I look forward to working withthem in the future,” he concludes.

Left to right: Corbin White, Zach Ivans.