FRANKFURT, GERMANY – At the recent 165th IAA motor show in Frankfurt, experiential sound design company PaniX GBR responded to specific client demands for “surround sound to follow video content” by employing TiMax audio showcontrol and 3D audio animation capabilities for the exhibits and conferences of two separate auto brands.
More details from Out Board (www.outboard.co.uk):
For Hyundai, the PaniX team used a single 32-channnel TiMax SoundHub with MADI to create a dynamic and immersive press conference for the Korean manufacturer.
In the first instance TiMax created an intimate atmospheric soundscape for the very large press conference space. TiMax delay-matrixed Image Definitions also drew sharp focus onto locations at the left and right of the conference, as Jörg Rapp, PaniX MD explains further, “it enabled us to bring video content alive with fast moving engine sounds that sounded as if they were really travelling left to right and vice versa.” Audio events were triggered both manually and via timecode.
On an even grander scale at IAA, PaniX delivered the multichannel sound experience for the four-zone, 9000m2 Volkswagen booth as part of a team lead by consultant Hansjörg Wenzel, from Filmtec Media GmbH. The four zones included three themed zones: ‘Perform’, ‘Connect’ and ‘Innovate’, alongside the main ‘Plaza’ zone.
Two TiMax Soundhub systems, fitted with dual SSD harddrives for redundancy, provided audio playback and spatialisation for the zoned stand, with 48 channels serving the Plaza and 64 channels for the themed areas. In the main zone, TiMax handled audience area ambience effects, maintaining audio level above background noise level while preserving easy conversation levels – determined by the actual customer numbers present. Multitrack audio content was created originally in Pro Tools then laid up into TiMax harddrives to deliver complex layers of audio which moved and morphed around the audience, via MADI into a complex Rocknet network then ultimately to a distributed system of d&b loudspeakers.
In each of the four zones, large LED screens displayed varied video content for which TiMax controlled individual 3D soundscapes. During the show all TiMax units ran operator-free, playing back multichannel spatialised audio on a loop and sync’d to video by timecode. ‘Perform’ zone, for example featured a lot of sound effects with much more low frequency content, but the overall effect across the whole stand was harmoniously blended by the TiMax units. The ‘Plaza’ was less subtle, with busier sound effects content for more high-profile dramatic impact.
Rapp was very happy with the final outcome of IAA, to which he and his team had dedicated many hours of planning and set up. TiMax was his product of choice following a ‘shoot out’ with other contenders and he explained how TiMax fits his needs, “The system has to run stable, and it must be multi-client so Stephan (Diebel, Jörg’s business partner) and I can work at the same time. The user interface has to be very intuitive, as there is no time on the job to mess around with creating custom user interfaces. Most important is to have a delay matrix, because localisation cannot work without delay. Also we need DAW-like editing functions. The system has to run fluently without sacrifices to the workflow even when using full DSP power.”
He continued, “At the moment we think there is no system which would be as good as the TiMax in our workflow.”
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