The annual Oper Im Steinbruch event staged in the Roman Quarry amphitheatre of St Margarethen in Vienna, has made itself a summer staple with production values as large as the stage itself – and at At 80m wide and 30m deep, it Europe’s largest outdoor stage.
Sound designer Volker Werner relies upon object-based spatialisation from TiMax SoundHub to ensure the classical opera narratives, such as this year’s by Verdi, are simple to follow for the venue’s 4,700-capacity audiences.
Each year since the event’s inception in 2017, the loudspeakers have been integrated into the main stage scenery, with a total of 98 loudspeakers set in 53 positions on the main stage and spatially unified by a redundant system of two 64-channel TiMax SoundHub processors with Dante, which handle the spatialisation and vocal localisaton for the main stage. Integrated into the system with TiMax is an Amadeus Active Audio system providing spatial acoustics on an extended 32-channel surround system.
Werner has consistently relied on TiMax as ‘the only way to easily create a flexible, high-channel count, directional acoustic reinforcement system using dynamically managed precedence’. Out Board director Robin Whittaker was on hand during set up to assist with the TiMax TrackerD4 deployment, and TiMax SoundHub configuration and integration with Amadeus.
TiMax TrackerD4 precision stagetracking is also in place with 14 TTd4 Sensors to cover the vast and open-air stage. TrackerD4 automates the vocal localisation of the solo performers, allowing their movements across the pre-zoned stage to sound as natural and realistic as possible. As each role is also played by several performers, employing TiMax TrackerD4 frees performers from precise positioning in pre-rehearsed locations.
The 80-voice choir was simultaneously manually automated by the TiMax SoundHub integral showcontrol on a scene-by-scene basis. While the real choir was singing off-stage and out of sight, they are automatically overlaid onto the matching positions of the extras on stage, whilst some elements of the choir vocals were spatialised to seem as if they were behind the scenery.
As well as an orchestra, Nabucco called for a stage band, which was handled with pre-recorded content played back from QLab that triggered TiMax spatialisation via OSC, which relocated the audio to different positions on stage and also backstage. The full effect, which incorporated EQ Snapshot automation in TiMax alongside the spatial automation, had the band ‘walking’ from centre backstage to front-stage left, and on to front-stage right. The effect according to Werner, ‘recreated the colour change of a distant sound changing to a close sound.’
The effect is one of the many soundscapes created by TiMax that augmented the Amadeus Active Acoustics system using the 32-channel surround sound system. These channels created active acoustics both at the stage and around the audience and also doubled as an immersive audio fx system that extended the work of TiMax for static effects and also for animated effects such as lightning strikes and thunder.
TiMax TrackerD4’s Tracker Translate app also fed live OSC data to the active acoustics system that matched the singers’ stage positions. This meant the early and late reflections in the Amadeus system were generated and interpolated in real time to the positions of the singers. ‘Since all the reflections from the quarry have the right timing, we created a great blend from the direct sound and the natural reflections – just as though it were real concert acoustics,’ Werner explains.
