All images by Jim Kumorek.
Audio Director Brayden Dana mans the Yamaha PM7 front-of-house console, which feeds each stage input through post-fader direct outs into the Soundscape system.
“You don't realize how much your brain works to try to deal with sound not seeming to come from the object making the sound. The Soundscape system removes that issue from the worship experience.” David McCauley, Principal Consultant, CSD Group, New Haven, IN
Much is made about making church environments more immersive—to make the congregation feel more a part of the service than a spectator at an event. Often this refers to new capabilities in the lighting system, or to creating an environmental projection system. At The Summit Church’s new broadcast campus in the Capital Hills area of Raleigh, N.C., however, this concept includes the purportedly first ever house of worship installation of d&b Soundscape.
"What Soundscape does is allows you to place an object's audio channel in the room in real space.” David McCauley, Principal Consultant, CSD Group, New Haven, IN
“Soundscape is a very interesting product,” comments David McCauley, principal consultant with CSD Group in New Haven, Ind., and the lead consultant for the AVL design of the campus. “In general, when you're listening to natural sounds, you hear the object creating the sound from its actual location. You know exactly where everything is by hearing. However, that’s not the case when it’s coming through a PA system. Even with stereo systems, objects on stage are not really locatable. What Soundscape does is allows you to place an object's audio channel in the room in real space.”
The how
Soundscape works through a combination of 45 speakers placed around the circumference of the room, a computer-based user interface for placing audio channels in the room, and sophisticated signal processing. The Yamaha PM7 front-of-house console feeds each stage input through post-fader direct outs into the Soundscape system so that Soundscape can use its DSP to locate the object audibly within the room.
Soundscape works through a combination of 45 speakers placed around the circumference of the room, a computer-based user interface for placing audio channels in the room, and sophisticated signal processing.
“The DSP times everything for each channel,” McCauley explains. “The sound for that input channel is calculated and delayed for each speaker so that no matter where you are, you ‘hear’ that input from where the Soundscape user interface has placed it in the space.” If the audio engineer tells the system that the electric guitar channel is located upstage far right, everyone will hear that guitar coming from upstage far right.
The why
“Our goal in giving Soundscape a try was to create that more immersive environment,” says Brayden Dana, audio director at The Summit Church. “And in being able to spread out the instruments and vocals on stage, it also helps generate some clarity in the audio mix. The details of what each musician is doing is able to come through in a way that doesn’t happen as well with a standard PA system. And we’re also able to utilize the system in a way that encourages congregational participation. For example, a choral track with a lot of reverb can be placed out in the room itself, and if used judiciously, it simply sounds like congregational singing, and sub-consciously encourages the congregation to join in more significantly.”
The view from the MA Lighting dot2 lighting station.
But that’s only half of what Soundscape provides. Soundscape also provides acoustics processing to make the space sound like whatever acoustic space you desire.
“When you use Soundscape to create your reverb effects, the reverb sounds natural because it’s actually coming from the surrounding walls and not the PA system,” Dana adds.
Moving forward
Dana does say that Soundscape can run the risk of adversely affecting the mix if not used carefully. “When I placed vocals front and center on the stage apron, I found that the vocal through the system was so concentrated to that front and center location that it was hard to hear them on the far sides of the room. I needed to move them further upstage in the Soundscape system to spread their sound out more in the room.”
With Soundscape, it’s even more important for the audio engineer to walk the room and make sure that the object positioning and resulting mix really makes sense for all seating areas.
Smaller Soundscape speakers appear along the side and rear walls of The Summit Church's new worship space.
With new capabilities come new risks, however, and new awareness to use them responsibly.
"You want to make sure you don’t have people spending time looking around trying to figure out where things are instead of engaging in the worship experience." Brayden Dana, Audio Director, The Summit Church, Raieigh, NC
“It would be easy to create distractions with the Soundscape system,” says Dana. “If you place objects in unnatural locations, people may start to wonder why they are hearing things from those locations. You want to make sure you don’t have people spending time looking around trying to figure out where things are instead of engaging in the worship experience."
He continues, "For Christmas this year, I was playing with placing a pad sound that the electric guitarist was playing further out in the room. This worked well for the pad, but then they’d start strumming and it was totally distracting, so I stopped doing that. But for a few musical segments where congregational participation wasn’t expected, we brought some things further off the stage to create an interesting texture to the music and it worked really well.”
Soundscape’s ability to store scenes made reconfiguring the object placement for different parts of the service simple to execute.
Soundscape’s ability to store scenes made reconfiguring the object placement for different parts of the service simple to execute. “Soundscape can also be controlled be an Ableton plug-in,” adds Dana, “which I want to experiment with in the future as we do use Ableton for adding in tracks.”
Lighting immersion
Summit also uses its house lighting to further enhance the immersive aspect of their services. Chroma-Q Inspire RGBW LED fixtures are used throughout the house area of the auditorium, controlled by a MA Lighting dot2 console. Summit uses the color-changing capabilities of the Inspire fixtures to bring the colors of the stage out into the room to provide a more unified feel to the space and less of a “them and us” atmosphere.
Both the church and CSD are very pleased with the immersive aspects of the room and the end result of the d&b Soundscape system. “The Soundscape system is really a relaxing experience to listen to,” sums up McCauley. “You don't realize how much your brain works to try to deal with sound not seeming to come from the object making the sound. The Soundscape system removes that issue from the worship experience.”