As I walked the floors of a pop-up music venue within the LA Convention Center, pristine images of magenta-hued nebulas were projected on all four walls and the ceiling. The legendary recording artist, Moby, and his six-piece band were performing atmospheric electronic music on a stage in the center of the space. And the sound was being emitted evenly from every angle by L-Acoustics’ state-of-the-art L-Series speakers.
The word “immersive” gets thrown around a lot these days. However, after attending live music events constantly for the past 18 years, Cercle Odyssey was my first live music experience that actually fit that description.
This masterful and legitimate execution was to be expected from Cercle. Over the past decade, the innovative event brand has brought artists to perform among the most iconic and historic places in the world. From a modular synthesizer show in front of the Pyramids of Giza, to an elegant piano concert under the Northern Lights in Finland, and a bangin’ tech house track in the middle of Plaza de España in Sevilla, Spain.
Cercle Odyssey is the touring version of this concept. By building temporary spaces in different cities (so far, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Paris), Cercle can now invite 5,000 people to be enveloped by beautiful visuals and music.
To best mirror the epic locations of their traditional events, Cercle called upon esteemed director Neels Castillon to capture footage throughout the globe to project at the show. But Cercle’s founder, Derek Barbolla, is clear that the visuals are there to support the sound, and has used L-Acoustics systems since the beginning of Cercle.
“[Cercle Odyssey] is a combination of visuals, lights, and sound, but the most important thing is the sound,” Barbolla told a select few journalists before giving us a tour of the venue.
For Cercle to succeed as a touring concept, the visuals had to go from 3D to 2D. But the expansive nature of its events lives on in the sound presentation. A traditional Cercle event uses standard stereo, but Cercle Odyssey expands to 360 audio.
“How do you recreate an experience of something that’s as beautiful as doing a set in front of the Pyramids in Egypt?” When L-Acoustics’ CEO, Laurent Vassié, poses the question, he remarks on the visuals being projected on all the walls and the ceiling. He also mentions that Cercle is filling the room with curated scents to capture as many senses as possible. But the true 360 aspect of Cercle Odyssey is the audio.
L-Acoustics was fully equipped to create a 360 audio landscape because of its prominent L-ISA (L-Acoustics Immersive Sound Art) system. It’s been used in many different environments, including Janet Jackson’s residency at Resorts World in Las Vegas and Max Cooper’s Immersive Audio Spatial Performance at Polygon Live Festival in London.
“The goal is to bring the idea of spatial audio, or immersive audio, or hyper-real audio to the live event at all scales,” says Scott Sugden, director of product management, solutions, at L-Acoustics.
Moby performed with a band, so Cercle’s engineer took full advantage of the agency provided to him through the spatial mixing software. More than once during the evening, different sonic elements would take sharp turns throughout the system. These moves drew my focus to different areas of the venue, which, due to its completely immersive nature, revealed imagery that I may have missed otherwise.
When it comes to the specific design of the L-ISA system at Cercle Odyssey, it is technically 16.1. All 16 channels are line arrays, the universally adopted speaker configuration that L-Acoustics invented in 1992. In total, 72 speakers are outputting 500,000 watts. There are 12 channels of immersive surround hanging around the perimeter, four main line arrays above the stage facing into the crowd, and a subwoofer unit suspended in the center point above the stage.
To prepare for this unique configuration, Moby’s team visited L-Acoustics’ studio in Los Angeles, where they have the facilities to virtually model exactly how the space will sound in advance. The sessions were vital to the success of the show because, in truth, immersive systems present choices that have never existed in live sound. Seasoned artists like Moby and his team have to completely reimagine what they’ve been doing for decades.
“You see artists’ eyes light up when they see this for the first time — ‘Holy cow, I never thought I could do this,’” Sugden says.
“There’s been a lot of evolutions of technology in the last 30 years. Most of them, the audience would never be aware of. Digital networks of audio. It makes it easier for us working at the show. I don’t think the audience knows the difference,” Sugden says. “I know the audience experienced a difference when the line array came out because it sounded better. Immersive audio, what L-ISA is doing, absolutely, the audience goes, ‘Something is different. Something is better.’”
I certainly knew something was better during Moby’s performance. No matter where I stood within the temporary venue, the audio was clear and even. While in reality, there is no sound in space — if the cosmos did produce natural music like deserts and jungles (two other environments projected during Moby’s set), it wouldn’t come from a singular point. It would surround me just as it did at Cercle Odyssey.
The post Moby at Cercle Odyssey: The closest I ever came to floating through space appeared first on MusicTech.
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