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Tube UK supplies “Kagami” shows

Technology collective Tin Drum asked Manchester-based audio specialists Tube UK to assist with the delivery of a sound system - speakers together with a playback/racking control system - for a series of immersive mixed reality performance concerts, “Kagami”, featuring the music of the late artist, composer and audio producer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

The in-the-round shows were originally staged during the 2023 Manchester International Festival (MIF23) at the Old Granada Studios, also with Tube as audio supplier. Tin Drum next moved the show to the Roundhouse in London for a high-profile showcase and again asked Tube UK to supply the audio equipment, including speakers and collaborating closely with their sound designer Rob Parkinson.

“Kagami” will now tour worldwide for the next two or three years with the same audio control set up as delivered to the initial UK productions by Tube. Audiences wear compact Magic Leap 2 AR headsets, start off in a circle and can see a virtual Sakamoto playing the piano in the centre area, together with dimensional art synched to the music. As the piece unfolds, they can explore the space while hearing the spatial audio and experiencing the surrounding atmosphere through the speaker array rigged in the venue.

Rob Parkinson is using D&B Audiotechnik’s S100 Soundscape to create a layer of sonic atmosphere. In March 2023, just a couple of days after Sakamoto’s passing, audio engineer and designer Kazuyuki “zAk” Matsumura, who has been integral to Sakamoto’s live sound/recorded works for over a decade, reached out to D&B in Japan to establish the feasibility of the project using D&B Soundscape.

Matsumura’s original sound design for the piece stems from Sakamoto’s “Playing the Piano” concert series which was both performed live and streamed. He wanted to realise this once again without the presence of the artist, and so paid extra attention to how the audience might experience the body of the piano as if it was there right in front of them.

A system mock-up was set up in D&B’s Yokohama demo room, and then again at their partner Soundscape’s studio in Tokyo, where a quarter of the circle making up the full system for audio preproduction was emulated to translate Matsumura’s aural concepts into audio. This particular show was premiered at The Shed in New York and was a great success, so it was decided to use the same base sound design again for the “Kagami” shows.

The main challenge for “Kagami” from the general audio side was to design a safe network system for playback that would run without the engineers present. Dante enabled DS100 was convenient as it could cater for numerous design changes, explains Ayumi Hanano from D&B Audiotechnik in Japan.

For the Roundhouse shows, Tube UK supplied twenty-nine D&B E-Series speakers - E5s, E6s and E8s - with circular deployment in the venue’s main space, with V-10P and Y10P downfills in the centre, plus two flown V-Subs. Additional speakers (two D&B Y7Ps and nine D&B E8s) were rigged in an induction space showing a pre-performance film comprising a mix of Sakamoto images and video footage.

The main room speakers were rigged in five circles in the Roundhouse roof and used to create a rich and enveloping concert hall in which to stage the performance. With the audio plot drawn up in advance, once in the venue Rob Parkinson worked with the riggers to get the CAD drawing and actual reality as close as possible. Once in place, the X/Y position of each speaker was laser measured and the positional information updated in the Soundscape software.

Next the speaker-to-floor distances were measured, also with a laser tool, as each box has to be physically exactly where it is in the computer. Parkinson worked on this element of the process with YoYo Munk, Tin Drum’s chief scientist. The number and types of speakers and amplifiers will vary as “Kagami” tours around the world depending on the region and venue, so Soundscape recreates the original object-based spatial mix in the new venues, and Parkinson will lead the production redesign each time it moves.

The playback show runs on a QLab machine - with another for hot backup - feeding into the brains of the system, the D&B DS100 Signal Engine, which maps the movement and immersive effects - time delay and level control - for every speaker. For this set up, QLab runs automation for En-Scene - sound object localisation using level and delay parameters - and En-Space, convoluted room emulation. The signals are distributed via Dante to two D&B DS10 Dante to AES convertors which were interfaced to ten D&B D20 amps for The Roundhouse installation, and then to the speakers.

All the audio is cued through a That Little Box controller, a custom designed product invented by Rob Parkinson. For the Roundhouse, Tube also supplied their first Yamaha DM7 digital mixing console - Parkinson liked it so much that he asked production manager Rory Howson to add it as a first choice to the “Kagami” touring rider. Kagami’s next stops are Taipei, Tokyo, and then Sydney in 2025.

(Photos: National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei, Taiwan/Chen-Chou Chang)

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