Glyndebourne, the celebrated East Sussex opera house, has integrated TiMax SoundHub spatial processing into its audio infrastructure in a landmark upgrade.
The venue is amongst the world’s most acoustically sensitive performance environments and here, opera is preserved as fundamentally an acoustic art form.
Without compromise to this tenet, Head of Sound and Video Jonathan Moss led the installation which marked the first stage of a long-term move to harness object-based spatialisation.
TiMax was central to the venue’s audio redesign. Moss’s dialogue with Robin Whittaker of TiMax was undertaken across a period of four years and well ahead of any further reinforcement considerations.
“With a number of upgrades coinciding, we had the rather unique opportunity to look at things holistically,” Moss explained. “We were able to assess where we wanted to end up. TiMax is one of the first steps, not the end of the journey.”
A traditional proscenium system comprises EM Acoustics’s Reference Series – R12s with R8 infills and S215 subs at balcony level, supported by a network of permanently installed Reference Series loudspeakers throughout the auditorium.
With Dante providing the audio backbone for EM Acoustics DQ20s, driven via an SSL Live console, the seamlessly straightforward TiMax integration amounted to little more than a rack mount connected the network by two cables.
Yet, referring to the repertory nature of Glyndebourne, Moss stated: “TiMax gives us the toolkit that can actually accommodate our schedule.”
During a busy summer season, dedicated sound sessions are rare, and the manual delay previously needed for spatial work was operationally costly.
With a timetable comprised of morning fully supported technical rehearsal, an afternoon changeover for a public evening show, then an overnight reset for the next day, Moss confirmed: “We can achieve what we need within the sessions we’ve got, rather than being limited by the time it takes to do things manually.”
The audio enhancement was immediate with spatial imaging applied only to the proscenium loudspeakers, TiMax tightened image definitions inward by roughly a metre on each side, pulling the perceived source firmly to the stage while mapping the stage area.
Moss described the shift as PA sound becoming hi-fi sound, adding, “TiMax does a surprising amount even when you’re not really using it heavily at all.”
Of course, as Moss exhorts, “We wouldn’t be good technicians if we didn’t go and try and press every button.”
Following system commissioning by TiMax product support engineer, Gerry Marrone, the Glyndebourne sound team set about using the SoundHub for the purpose of A/B testing, initially preserving the original set up as a cue in TiMax, “…because change can be scary”.
Moss confirmed, “We quickly ditched that. It was very clear the new sound was just better. Currently TiMax is just in the background as a system processor, without adding specific spatial elements to our current shows.
“We’re taking advantage of it… whether its physical improvements, the psychoacoustic improvements … without anyone really knowing it’s there.”
The transparency extends beyond opera. For presentations and talks in the intentionally reverberant auditorium, TiMax enables the sound to flourish within the room’s acoustic influence at lower SPLs.
The audio infrastructure is carefully future-proofed. Integration with the SSL Live console adds flexibility via OSC and control panels allow any channel to be designated as a spatial object on demand.
Full object-based spatialisation is built into the workflow, with spatial presets, tracked movement paths and surround distribution, simply awaiting the expanded infrastructure planned for the auditorium over coming years.
Having successfully made the sound system disappear for Glyndebourne, Moss reflected that the reaction to the new system was exactly what he had aimed for. “The general response is nothing,” he said. “The biggest compliment we can get is when someone doesn’t notice what we’ve done.”
