Ulm, Germany (February 12, 2024)—These days, immersive audio is everywhere—even in outer space. The movie poster tag line for Alien may say that “In space, no one can hear you scream,” but if you’re sitting in the Laupheim Planetarium outside Ulm, Germany, you not only hear sound while you travel through the heavens, but get it from a 7.2 configuration as well.
The Laupheim Planetarium and Observatory gets more than 30,000 visitors every year, all of whom come to check out Zeiss Planetarium with its immersive full-dome projection system. Last year, the facility got an audio upgrade setting up nine speakers and two subwoofers in a 7.2 configuration with an additional two speakers installed at the apex of the dome. As might be expected, the system also needed a tactile interface suitable for use in the dark by the in-house engineers, plus the ability to control the planetarium lighting via the same physical controller.
Overseeing the audio mixer upgrade and integration was Dr Max Rößner, a freelance immersive media engineer specializing in planetarium systems. At the heart of the new audio system is an Allen & Heath AHM-64 Audio Matrix Processor fitted with a Dante card. The AHM-64’s rear panel analog outputs are used to feed the nine speakers and two subs in the venue, while a DT168 Dante Expander is used to provide localized analog inputs to the system, including wireless mic receivers, media players and other auxiliary sound sources.
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The planetarium’s main sound source is a PC fitted with a Marian Clara E Dante interface; using Reaper, it is synchronized to the projection system via SMPTE and sends audio over the Dante network to the AHM-64 for routing and control.
For control, a pair of IP8 remote controllers are used, each with eight motorized faders, eight OLED screens, and 23 assignable SoftKeys. The controllers are configured so that 10 of the faders are used to handle audio with the remaining six dedicated to lighting control. “The IP8s integrated seamlessly during programming and commissioning,” said Rößner. “The AHM’s underlying architecture is flexible enough to enable the integration of unconventional functionality, such as lighting control in our case.”
“The system was installed very quickly, and it has improved the sound quality significantly,” concludes in-house engineer Alex Gölkel. “It is a great improvement now that all sources can be mixed and used simultaneously with a user-friendly control interface.”
