Greece (January 20, 2022)—Brian Eno recently collaborated with his brother, Roger Eno, a solo recording artist and film and TV music composer in his own right, as they released their first ever joint album, Mixing Colours, a project that spawned a live show.
A 360-degree d&b Soundscape system was deployed at the iconic Odeon of Herodes Atticus amphitheatre in Greece for the first-ever, joint live performance of producer and artist, Brian Eno and his brother, pianist and composer Roger Eno.
Their first live performance as a duo took place in the open-air performance space, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, a renovated stone amphitheatre originally constructed in the year 161 AD.
“Due to the age and size of the amphitheater, I thought that it would be a real challenge to analyze how the sound spreads in the space, and how we would manage coverage and reflections,” commented Chris Hamilton, Front of House Engineer. “Luckily, because it’s such a historic venue there has been a lot of studies done on it and someone had previously conducted a full audio study for the space, so we had great audio info to work with.”
Hamilton had previously been introduced to Soundscape by Massimo Carli of BH Audio and suggested to use it for the outdoor venue.
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“I spoke with management about the opportunity we had to do something really special here and something that no one has done before,” said Hamilton. “The challenge was more reassuring them that this will be simple, easy to install, and reliable — and the audience won’t even know it’s there, but they will hear it. We definitely took a risk together, but there was trust and the results spoke for themselves.”
d&b Soundscape is powered by the DS100 Signal Engine, an audio system processor based on a Dante-enabled signal matrix and its two software modules, En-Scene and En-Space.
d&b En-Scene is a sound object positioning tool allowing for the individual placement and movement of up to 64 sound objects. It depicts stage scenarios so that each sound object corresponds both visually and acoustically. d&b En-Space is an in-line room emulation tool which creates and modifies reverberation signatures for any space. These reverberation signatures are emulations derived from acoustic measurements of nine performance venues and convolved within the audio processor.
For many, including Hamilton, this was their first show back since restrictions had been lifted, so anticipation was high. That being said, the audio and performance was very well received with fans and the band alike praising the show.
“After the show, everyone was beaming and saying how good it sounded,” Hamilton remembered. “The future for me is all about spatial audio tools such as Soundscape. Soundscape helped me build not just volume but spread and movement as the show built. The clarity you get compared to a standard L/R setup is wonderful. It’s definitely something I’m looking to bring in for more shows with other artists in the future.”
“There is nothing like experiencing 360-degree audio for the first time and having introduced Chris to Soundscape a while back in our studio in Italy I’m pleased he finally got to try it out in the ‘real’ world – and with such compelling results,” concluded Carli.
