Tokyo’s New National Theatre (NNTT) has recently integrated a 32-channel TiMax2 SoundHub-S32 audio processor and playback system and TiMax Tracker radar show control system with six TT Sensors and 32 TT Tags.
This provides the venue with automated vocal localisation and audio show control in both the main ‘Playhouse’ auditorium and also the smaller ‘Pit’ theatre.
Kunio Watanabe, manager of the NNTT’s audio division, specified the systems and contacted SCA Sound Solutions for effective and natural vocal tracking and immersive audio spatialisation.
Watanabe commented: “We now have a very natural and smooth sound imaging for the actors’ voices, without the feeling of it being a sound ‘effect’, by which I mean, the audience could feel the individual voice at the exact position of the individual singer, not from left, right and centre speakers. This may sound obvious, but other systems do not give this.”
Tracked by TiMax Tracker tags, the individual output of each performer’s radio-microphone channel routes from the mixing console channel direct outs through to the TiMax2 SoundHub DSP which delay-matrixes it to the distributed loudspeaker setup for both venues, templates for which are stored in the TiMax unit.
Sound designer for the production, Yoshio Ueda, explained: “I could easily adjust the level of each speaker precisely in the process of creating image definitions and there was no sense of incongruity in the sound images created. Additionally, transition from image definition to image definition was very smooth. The sound of the choir is also faithfully recreated as a 3D spatial image and it sounds very natural and a beautiful effect. I was very much satisfied with the result!”
