Feeding audio to the custom 27.2-channel audio system in the Sweden’s GöteborgsOperan riverside performance complex presented the venue’s Chief Sound Engineer – somehow Andreas Renhorn needed to manage channels of high-quality audio for an ambitious new production that relied on an electronic soundtrack composed at IRCAM.
The production was The World to Darkness and to Me, a new dance work by choreographer Richard Siegal with abstract, percussive electronic music by Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch. Hoesch’s soundtrack accompanies Siegal’s ‘If/Then’ dance strategy, which combines written choreography with options for the dancers improvise around each others’ moves.
Hoesch’s music was created using visual music programming language Max, and required a particularly large dynamic range for its use of light and shade. Having been recorded using MSP audio extensions and 3D spatialisation plug-ins, it was also intended to be played back in three dimensions via the 27.2 loudspeaker array installed for the production. This used Ambisonics to creadte a three-dimensional soundfield, allowing sounds to be placed completely unrelated to the loudspeaker positions.
‘I needed to find equipment that was able to achieve the highest possible quality of digital conversion,’ Renhorn confirms. His research led him to Focusrite’s RedNet 2 – with16 channels of studio-quality AD/DA conversion per unit, a pair of RedNet 2s provided the right number of channels for the main system plus auxiliaries, as well as making it easy to get the audio where it was needed, thanks to the plug-and-play Dante Ethernet-based networking. RedNet couples Focusrite conversion with mic preamps and other studio-quality audio capabilities with the Dante Ethernet-based audio networking to record, distribute and play back audio over IP.
Along with two RedNet 2s, The World to Darkness and to Me used a MacBook Pro running QLab (a cue-based playback software system designed for theatre and live theatre work) for its audio playout. A Dante Virtual Sound Card (DVS) driver assigned to the laptop’s internal Ethernet port was carried digital audio to the RedNet units via a standard NetGear GS716T switch. The analogue outputs of the RedNet 2s were fed into a 29-channel d&b audiotechnik replay system via DB25 cables, with two additional channels for stage foldback and one for voice.
Supply and installation of the RedNet components, as well as the playback system, fell to Gothenburg-based sound and lighting specialist AV-1. ‘This was one of the fastest and smoothest installations ever,’ says AV-1’s Göran ‘Guran’ Blomgren. ‘Supplementing the Opera’s existing front speakers, we installed 22 loudspeakers on the balconies plus five mounted 25m up in the ceiling – yet, including the loudspeaker and Ethernet cabling, it was completed in under six hours.’
The Ethernet-based functionality of RedNet also had unexpected benefits: ‘Hoesch was impressed at how easy it was to set up his laptop at the centre of the auditorium on a 50m Cat6 cable, so he could fine-tune the feeds to the playback array,’ Blomgren reports. ‘And how easy it was to hook up a second laptop to the same network for recording by simply connecting an Ethernet cable between the laptop and the switch.’
The production was a masterpiece of multimedia entertainment. A mix of sound elements – some derived from samples of the production’s musicians – circled the 1,300-seat auditorium, in sync with the dancers and dazzling lighting effects. For similar performances in the future, Renhorn plans to use a RedNet PCIe card in a Thunderbolt PCIe chassis for even better performance and minimum latency.
