As the TED Organisation’s relationship with its PA supplier neared its end, audio consultant Michael Nunan was working on a TED Countdown project in Brussels alongside FOH sound engineer Miles Barton. ‘We were discussing what PA manufacturer would be a good choice going forwards,’ Barton recalls.
He believed Martin Audio would be a good choice and approached Martin Audio rental partner 22live’s Director, Spencer Beard. TED Head of Production Mina Sabet subsequently contacted Martin Audio, and the idea gathered speed.
Sabet was determined to challenge what had previously been acccepted when it came to audio projection. ‘There’s a level of perfection and excellence that we look for and a very specific sound. I want speakers to be very “present”, as if they’re standing in front of you – something very different from a corporate event. And for performances and music we really want an immersive space, so that attendees would feel a deep sense of connection with both the speaker and the room.’
This was a challenge that Harter readily embraced: ‘Miles had recommended our optimisation as a tool to improve TED broadcast quality by reducing spill from the PA. At that point we introduced Simon Honywill to design and spec it – and upgraded it to a TiMax spatialisation platform.’
‘I was thrilled, as I’ve been a long-term advocate of all things TED related, having worked on a TED Global event back in 2013, and even delivered my own TEDx talk,’ Honywill says.
A further bonus was the fact that this was to be in the TED Theatre portable auditorium, made of sourced Douglas fir trees that has been reused annually since 2014 when it was originally designed. ‘This made it a really beautiful environment to work in,’ Honywill says. ‘It’s the reason I really wanted to go to town on the design, because while most of the output is speech, video content, audio bumpers and live music also play a major part.’
For a single week each year, a wing of the Vancouver Convention Centre event space is transformed into the custom 1,200-seat TED Theatre in order to host high-profile talks. Honywill knew that incorporating fellow Focusrite Group brand TiMax into his design would allow spatialised sound to be delivered to a seated audience in the auditorium that would make the presentations sound natural rather than appearing to emanate from a loudspeaker.
For the designer, the challenge was the fact that he would be liaising with Nunan, Sabet and Martin Audio integration partner Alford Media remotely from his base 4,600 miles away. He was also acutely aware that, aside from the live audience, TED would want a broadcast feed for its streaming platform’s many subscribers.
Honywill developed the workflow, creating a sound system model and transferring designs created in Vectorworks to SketchUp and then importing into Martin Audio’s proprietary Display3 visualisation software, – before handing over responsibility to Eric Faulk at Alford Media for implementation. This enabled him to send comprehensive, and immersive delayed sound to both surround and overhead speaker locations. ‘The model actually looked great,’ Faulk reports.
Five hangs of WPS line array were positioned in an arc – the three centre hangs 11 elements deep and the two outer hangs nine deep – making 51 fully-optimised boxes in total. These were supported by a central array of ten SXC118 cardioid subs.
The main surround rear loudspeakers comprise four hangs of four Martin Audio Torus horizontal arrays, with FlexPoint 12 coaxial point source boxes enveloping the space and distributing all the overheads to create full immersion in an object-based scenario. Subwoofers for surround comprised of SXH218 below the Torus arrays.
Honywill worked with TiMax co-founder Dave Haydon and Senior Product Developer Dan Higgott on optimisation of the TiMax SoundHub distribution matrix. ‘With Martin Audio’s Display prediction software we could very accurately predict what the sound system was going to sound like,’ Higgott says. ‘And with the TiMax software we were able to pre-calculate all the level and delay to every element of the system. The big difference with a TiMax immersive system such as TiMax is that, with TiMax, we can calculate the delay times for every loudspeaker and input source back to the position of that source. It allows the perception of the sound system to completely disappear for the audience; if you do it correctly the audience can forget they are listening to amplified sound.’
TED presenters occupy a set position downstage centre for their delivery, with the PA aligned to that: ‘While TiMax handles that elegantly,’ Honywill says. ‘There was content submitted in 5.1, and between Dave Haydon and I, we came up with a concept whereby there was a kind of generic set of image definitions that spread the 5.1 source out across the system in a very convincing way. And Michael Nunan was saying that the broadcast feed sounded the best it had ever done.’
He says the FOH (and Broadcast A1) team were hearing 6-10dB less PA in the presenter’s headset mic than in the past: ‘That is, the PA design was very effective at preventing the energy from the house PA spilling back onto the stage.’
Both Nunan and Martin Audio’s Brad Stephens also emphasised the importance of having a sound system that doesn’t put audio where it’s not wanted. ‘With the sound optimised for the room we can define coverage from front to back and exclude areas, either by ignoring them or actively excluding them with the Hard Avoid feature,’ Stephens says.
‘What sets this experience apart is that Martin Audio has been really focused in making the venue deeply immersive in a way that we haven’t experienced before at a TED conference,’ Sabet adds. ‘And in that respect, TiMax is unmatched. The partnership between Martin Audio and TED is taking us to another level of audio that we never thought possible.’
‘Previously it has been unavoidable hear the voice coming from the loudspeaker that I am sitting closest to, but the first time we put up a microphone on the stage this year the big, distributed Martin Audio PA was effectively transparent. It has completely changed their approach to pathways and how to manage the show in a single workflow’ Nunan says. ‘Using TiMax SoundHub creates enormous operational efficiencies.’
‘What I’m very impressed with is the time, energy, thoughtfulness and expertise that the Focusrite Group has brought to the event,’ Sabet says. ‘They really came through, in what was a complicated set-up. I know Michael Nunan was thrilled, and very excited about the potential.’
Next year will be the TED Conference’s twelfth and final year at the Vancouver Conference Centre before relocating to California, and Sabet is confident that the sound will take a further quantum leap. ‘I’m really excited about the future and the opportunity to make it even more immersive. The potential is amazing, and I expect to be blown away in year two.’
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