As Bath’s Distillery I relocates to be closer to Bristol and makes way for the upgraded Distillery II – a fully-rigged space for rehearsals, recording, performance and production – it has added Martin Audio CDD-Live 8 to the pre-existing Torus PA rig, processed through an Airsound spatial system.
In its latest incarnation, the studio has opted to make the facility commercially available for use by recording, film, music video and content producers, after previously being for private recording use only with no live facility.
The brains behind the specification belong to Sam Cunningham and Dave Roden – respectively also the Stereophonics’ long-time monitor and FOH engineers – had originally specified Torus several years ago, with four Torus T1215 (15°) boxes for each stage wing along with four SXC118 cardioid subs and four XE300 wedge monitors. A rack of iKom process control amplifiers – three iK42 and an iK81 – have also been upgraded with Dante cards.
Once in contact with Airsound, Cunningham set up a demo in the live room using CDD10s that were previously in their breakout rooms, along with some CDD8s – using Airsound Dipole technology at the rear of the room to assess the impact of an immersive object-based environment.
‘We added these speakers to create an immersive system that would still respect the main LR nature of the existing larger Torus house system,’ Cunningham explains. ‘The Airsound software basically takes an Atmos mix and allows it to tell where the speakers are placed.’
Having been so impressed with the constant curvature technology and value engineering of Torus, which Cunningham said was perfect for a room just shy of 20 metres deep, they knew that the CDD-Live 8 would be the ideal complement. The team already knew the qualities of CDD-Live 8, as Roden uses them as his nearfield monitors on live gigs.
With proof of concept established, six of these self-powered loudspeakers were purchased to create a system that runs entirely on the Dante network. ‘There’s network patch everywhere in the live room, so in my mind it became obvious that a Dante solution was the way to go,’ Cunningham says.
A single CDD-Live 8 is mounted towards the front on each side of the room, alongside the main LR Torus system; at the rear of the room on the mid-high truss are three further CDD-Live 8 – a central, and two sides – using the dipole to steer and create the rear image. The final overhead CDD-Live 8 handles the rear height element. ‘The way the software decoding works means you can position them anywhere,’ notes long-serving studio engineer, Phil Parsons.
Explaining the science, Cunningham says: ‘The Airsound software basically takes an Atmos mix and allows it to tell where the speakers are placed, fooling you into thinking you are listening to an Atmos system. It takes a LR system that already sounded incredible, into something completely different. In fact it all works shockingly well.’
Having specified all live system elements, Cunningham and Roden, working with Phil, put in a comprehensive backbone throughout of network, optical and power to make it a very diverse space, with a large live room. And in live mode, a modular 1.2m stage can be brought in, when the portable PA can be relocated from the back wall to 6m into the room.
‘Because of their location I couldn’t get loudspeaker patch to them, but I do have network everywhere so it was a no brainer to use powered speakers that can easily be moved – and therefore be used for anything,’ Cunningham says.
‘It’s exceeded expectations really,’ Parsons reports. ‘People who are used to mixing in the Atmos domain came in and they were blown away by it. It puts us in the immersive listening space and It’s incredibly impressive. There are few places around like this and definitely not one incorporating the Airsound, so to have it on a system this scale it’s quite unique.’
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