Chinese superstar Silence Wang’s Age of Romance World Tour played ten consecutive shows at Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium withwhat is believed to be the largest ever d&b Soundscape deployment in a stadium environment to date.
Supplied by OST Productions, one of China’s leading national specialists in sound solutions for large-scale concert touring, the system delivered immersive spatial audio to more than 60,000 audience members on each night of the run.
With 12 studio albums released since 2010, Silence Wang (Wang Sulong) is among China’s most successful contemporary singer-songwriters and music producers, with a following across China and Chinese-speaking audiences internationally. He recently entertained his global fanbase with a series of major arena shows across Asia, North America and Oceania.
With this recent run, Wang has become the first original singer-songwriter to undertake a residency employing Soundscape at this scale at Beijing’s National Stadium. Bringing this to fruition involved a collaboration between the d&b’s Greater China office, local and global EAS teams, OST Productions and Silence Wang’s long-standing sound designer, Jin Shaogang.
Shaogang has many major concert tours, broadcasts and landmark national events (including chief sound design for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony) to his credit.
‘With the full-range directivity of the d&b SL-Series, there is remarkably little energy emitted from the rear of the cabinets,’ Shaogang says. ‘When 360° arrays and delay speakers share the same trusses, this precise pattern control prevents low frequencies from spilling into the delay zones, audience seating or backstage areas and preventing bass bleed across the stage.
‘Soundscape dramatically expands the stadium sweet spot, from around a third of the venue to 60–70% of the entire audience area. Its performance in spatial imaging, layering and depth delivers an immersive experience that traditional stereo simply cannot match. The moment the lights come up, and the music kicks in for the very first song, you instantly feel an overwhelming sense of grand impact and vast spatial openness. I believe artists will use Soundscape wherever venue conditions allow.’
Driving th system is d&b Soundscape’s DS100 central processing engine. ‘In a stadium-scale Soundscape 360 system, every listener should be able to follow sound in motion with precision,’ says Sam Wang, Head of mobile sales & Senior System engineer at d&b audiotechnik Greater China. ‘By optimising loudspeaker layouts through Function Groups and managing object latency with the DS100’s delay mode, we minimise phase interference across the system. This preserves accurate spatial positioning, smooth panning and consistent localisation throughout the venue. Audiences experience coherent dynamic movement and rotational audio effects that remain stable, clear and engaging across the entire listening area.’
Delivering this experience in such an environment takes a record-breaking SL-Series system design, beginning with a main frontal system of seven hangs of KSL8/12, with two hangs of SL-Sub flown behind. Srving the 360 Soundscape are 22 hangs of GSL8 strung along the ceiling bowl with 22 groups of V10P providing two rings of fills, and an additional SL-Sub array. The system is completed by more than 150 KSL8 cabinets as outer fill, side fill, rear delay and side delay. All loudspeakers use ArrayProcessing to optimise performance.
Key to this implementation of Soundscape was d&b’s Create.Control software, which is designed to simplify and expand the creative use of the d&b Soundscape. ‘Create.Control lets us move fast,’ says Lucchi Federico Tobia, responsible for Soundscape Enablement at d&b audiotechnik Greater China. ‘With more than 400 snapshots and 300 animations programmed in just one month, speed and simplicity were essential. Songs can be built quickly, automation keeps the show running smoothly, and offline programming means projects can be prepared in advance, then scaled to any venue. For touring productions, it makes complex Soundscape workflows efficient, flexible and easy to adapt.’
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