Tosca and TiMax Talent Tracker automatic audio tracking

In March 2008 Raymond Gubbay’s perennial opera-in-the-round offering at London’s Royal Albert Hall featured a ground-breaking sound automation technique which combined Out Board’s TiMax Audio Imaging delay matrix with the new TiMax Talent Tracker (“TTT”) radar tracking system, based on ultra-wideband (UWB) radar technology developed in conjunction with Cambridge technologists Ubisense. Autograph Sound provided the Meyer/d&b and Digico sound system.

The new technology further augments the specialised “source-oriented reinforcement” audio system configuration that sound designer Bobby Aitken has utilised this year and for the previous nine years of Gubbay’s arena opera productions. The design is based on a multi-channel speaker system driven by a TiMax audio matrix whose job is to apply varying amounts of precedence delay to each of the performers’ radio mics as they move around the stage. This ensures all audience members perceive the vocal performances to be coming from the opera singers’ mouths and not from the multiple speakers distributed around the grid above the stage and beneath grilles in the stage floor.

Vocal intelligibility is key to Gubbay’s presentation of popular opera classics such as Madame Butterfly, Carmen, La Boheme and this year’s Tosca. His productions are unique in that the libretto is translated into English, mainly to appeal to a wider mass-market – and so it is vital the audience hears all the words. As the shows are also staged in the round, they have always involved close-miking of the principals and lead chorus members to make sure they’re heard, especially as their backs are turned to half of the audience most of the time.

In keeping with Gubbay’s desire to also satisfy the opera purists, Bobby Aitken and sound engineer Richard Sharrat have concentrated on achieving a high degree of subtlety in the sound reinforcement to effectively render the sound system inaudible and focus everyone’s sonic sensibilities on the performers themselves. This is where TiMax Audio Imaging and the new TiMax Talent Tracker come in.

The simple objective is to always ensure every audience member receives an acoustic wavefront from each performer about 10-20 milliseconds before they receive the reinforcing energy from the speakers. Within this short time difference the brain integrates the two arrivals together but focuses the listener instinctively into localising to the precedent arrival coming directly from the performer. This psychoacoustic phenomenon is often referred to as the Haas effect.

TiMax achieves this by setting up multiple unique delay relationships between every source (i.e. radio mic) and each loudspeaker reinforcing it. These relationships are changed every time a performer moves to a different location on stage, to maintain the acoustic precedence which makes the audience localise to the performer and not the speakers.

The TiMax software simplifies the process by allowing on-stage localisation zones to be pre-defined as “Image Definitions” which are really just pre-programmed tables of level/delay instructions to the TiMax matrix which tell it to place the actor’s audio image in the appropriate zone on stage. The TiMax dsp matrix firmware then applies special proprietary smooth-panning algorithms to ensure glitch-free delay transitions between Image Definitions.

In previous years the movements of actors between Image Definitions were mapped out in rehearsal into a series of TiMax showcontrol Cues, which the operator would step through manually during the show. In this year’s Tosca production, the TiMaxTalent Tracker system is continually following each actor’s movement around the stage with TiMax responding automatically in real-time to assign their individual radio mics onto the corresponding audio Image Definitions.

How the actors are tracked…

Each actor wears a small UWB transmitter Tag which communicates with an array of six small Sensors mounted on a lighting bar running around the Circle balcony-front just above the Second Tier boxes. The Sensors analyse a combination of Angle (AOA) and Time (TDOA) of Arrival information many times a second to allow the TTT software to locate where the actors are on stage. The TTT software sends MIDI messages to the TiMax ShowControl software via an internal soft MIDI link, identifying the actors by name and also by the specific pre-defined localisation zone they are each occupying at any instant in time.

The TiMax software then converts these messages using the pre-programmed Image Definition level/delay instructions and sends them to the TiMax DSP matrix to place the actors’ audio images in the appropriate localisation zones on stage. Each Tag’s refresh rate can be dynamically varied independently for individual actors, so the system can respond instantaneously to the rapid stage movements of certain characters whilst transmission bandwidth can be preserved on the more sluggish individuals.

Technology ahead of its time…

This all takes place automatically and in real-time, enabling the sound to follow the actors as they cross the stage, without any intervention from the operator. Considering that it could easily take dozens of cues to achieve manually, this represents a substantial reduction in pre-programming effort and removes the need for any intervention by the operator during the show.

The TTT location algorithms work equally well in the vertical plane, so for Tosca the TiMax system will also automatically track and localise the heroine as she gives her final aria at the top of the castle walls some 20 feet above the stage before taking her famous tragic plunge over the parapet.

The software can also generate MIDI events based on specific actors moving into close proximity to each other, a facility which could be used to help automate the routing of mics between the different channels of an A/B vocal reinforcement system for instance.

The scope of the system…

The TiMax Talent Tracker system can follow up to 60 actors at any time depending on refresh rate, or an indefinite number if you add further interlinked tracking cells. The TiMax delay matrix currently provides up to 32 audio inputs and can independently localise up to 16 actors simultaneously in the same scene, across 32 different Image Definitions. Larger arena productions and more complex spaces can utilize a series of interlinked cells of TTT Sensors networked together to cover the whole area.

As the TTT Sensors are mounted around the perimeter of the performance space it is ideally suited also to outdoor shows without a roof, and has already been scheduled for a major European musical theatre production on the shore of a lake during the summer.

TiMax audio interfacing can be analogue or digital, and in the case of Tosca its inputs are connected to the Digico console via AES/EBU. The TiMax system’s 32 analogue outputs feed directly to the XTA speaker controllers for EQ and additional signal distribution.

TiMax Audio Imaging at the debut Kremlin Zoria military tattoo

Moscow ’s spectacular Red Square played host to the debut Kremlin Zoria festival of military marching bands. Central to the sound reinforcement system, a TiMax Audio Imaging delay matrix enabled the performers’ amplified sound to follow their movements accurately around the vast arena.

Tattoo events around the world follow a long-established template provided by the Edinburgh original. In this respect the inaugural Russian event was no exception. Marching bands from the Moscow Garrison and German Army Corps were joined by the perennially-massed Scottish bagpipers and drummers. The event’s musical highlights included excerpts from Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, along with a special arrangement of Amazing Grace performed by the band of the British Coldstream Guards.

The sheer dimensions of the Moscow arena, however, added a further challenge for the sound design team, headed by Edinburgh Tattoo veteran John Del’Nero, who has relied upon TiMax for the last eight years in Scotland for its ability to keep pinpoint acoustic focus in what could otherwise be sound chaos. John was one of the first adopters of TiMax for such large-scale events, seeing it as a natural progression from the channel insert delay-imaging techniques he had been employing routinely in his theatre sound designs.

Likewise for the Kremlin Zoria, the TiMax delay matrixing process was intrinsic to his final acoustic sound map, providing not only the central audio imaging, but also to eliminate musical timing differences between nearfield reinforcement speakers and distant acoustic sources, many of which were moving around the arena.

The system was focused onto the multiple sound sources by first defining them as a number of localisation zones across the arena. These image definition origins were then delay-mapped independently to each of the loudspeakers and the seating areas they covered. The TiMax matrix and software would then statically or dynamically pan sound sources to these multiple locations around the arena as directed, continuously varying delay times so that the Haas precedence effect provided accurate imaging for the whole audience. Proprietary new smooth-panning algorithms in the TiMax dsp matrix firmware helped maintain absolute transparency in the delay-panning process by eliminating any glitching or phasing artifacts.

Del‘Nero, assisted on site by associate sound designer Sebastian Frost of Orbital Sound – who handled the TiMax programming - specified the multi-channel distributed sound system provided by Moscow-based Spin Music. The system comprised L-Acoustics’ Kudo line array systems positioned in the arena’s four corners as additional distant image anchors, with eight pairs of small dV-dosc arrays in nearfield reinforcement locations close to the two-sided audience seating. 16-channels of compact MTD108P cabinets provided extra audience in-fill.

Spin Music rented the 16x16 TiMax Rack System ShowControl PC from theatre and event sound automation specialists Out Board, who had it express-shipped direct from the Edinburgh Tattoo by Rock-It Cargo with the assistance of the Tattoo’s sound contractors Wigwam Acoustics.

TiMax at the heart of the danish royal theatre

No stranger to the principles of Source Oriented Reinforcement (SOR), Karsten Wolstad, one of Det Kongelige Teater’s principal sound designers, has employed Out Board’s TiMax delay matrix and showcontrol software at the heart of the theatre’s new playhouse sound system. The main design objective was to maximise dramatic impact by optimising localisation of amplified voices and effects throughout even the largest performances on the vast main stage

So, as the lights go up on the venue’s inaugural performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it will never be the audience who need to ask “Who’s there?”

Wolstad and sound design colleague Jonas Vest worked closely with Out Board’s Robin Whittaker to create an SOR-based sound system design to supply unobtrusive and subtle amplification with accurate audio image localisation and hence good intelligibility for all audience members.

Two rows of five d&b horn-loaded full-range cabinets provide the main reinforcement to the circular auditorium, supported by Tannoy NXT flat panel front fills with a further 32 NXT’s under the balconies as delays and for surround effects. Additional d&b’s cover the rear upper and side balconies plus some more on stage for first-wavefront support and deep upstage sound effects. A large format Studer Vista 5 console routes all microphone and playback sources via AES3 into a 16-in/32-out TiMax audio imaging processor, which in turn feeds the multi-channel distributed loudspeaker system.

The effect of focusing the system onto multiple sound sources is achieved by defining a number of localisation zones on stage and in the auditorium and then delay-mapping these image definition origins independently to each of the loudspeakers and the seating areas they cover. The TiMax matrix and software can then statically or dynamically pan sound sources to multiple locations around the stage or house, continuously varying delay times so that the Haas precedence effect maintains good imaging for the whole audience. Notably, Det Kongeligeis also one of several recent TiMax installations fitted with new proprietary smooth-panning firmware algorithms which enhance the transparency of the delay-panning process by eliminating any glitching or phasing artifacts.

Sound effects content is handled by TiMax Soundtablet editing, playback and waveform-based panning functions which are embedded within the TiMax showcontrol software, triggered either manually or by external MIDI or SMPTE control from the Studer console.

Very satisfied with the final outcome, Wolstad commented, “I am absolutely delighted with the results we achieved – and with the continued co-operation we have received from Robin and Out Board.”

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