d&b Soundscape reveals secrets of the Paris opera
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Spearheading the city’s creative reawakening is PASE Platform, a cultural organisation melding together art and technology. Located far from the madding crowds, in the city’s tightly-knit Cannaregio district, PASE is rooted in the local contemporary arts scene, as well as Europe’s wider creative community. Harnessing the collaborative power of artists, designers, technicians and researchers the PASE team have set out to uncover and create experiences from new creative languages and technologies. Among them, and central to its working studio, is the d&b Soundscape.
For PASE co-founders and directors, Victor Nebbiolo di Castri, and Valeria Zane, being at the avant-garde of creative production is no less than a social and artistic obligation. “Recent developments in immersive listening and spatial sound diffusion confirm we must take these advancements into account,” explains Zane. “For creators and the public, we want to support new projects by exploring space and sound in an innovative way. To provide the technology that will take us into a new digital golden age.”
Fundamental to this endeavour is a flexible d&b Soundscape rig. Among PASE’s former residents is Robert Henke, digital music pioneer and performance artist. Before the world premiere of his album, Dust at Palazzo Grassi in 2019, Henke spent a week preparing at PASE Platform, “A very special situation,” he says. “The d&b Soundscape system allowed me to dive really deeply into the details - of the placement of sound sources. For me, it’s just far more rewarding to listen to a complex sound field that is all around me than to listen to a stereo configuration.”
More recently, PASE’s collaboration with the Paris Opera and RATP (the Parisian company for public transport) has resulted in a sonic representation of the city’s famous performing arts venue. An audio project that would ultimately become a headphone experience for travellers passing through the nearby Opéra metro station.
“I went to Paris to record behind the scenes sounds of the opera,” explains Nebbiolo di Castri. “The idea was to create atmospheric recordings that give your everyday commuter unexpected insight into this huge operation that is the opera. Naturally, people tend to associate opera primarily with operatic music but there is so much more going on - like costume creation, set building, even the maintenance of this beautiful building. All these activities create sounds. And it’s those we wanted to capture.”
Nebbiolo di Castri returned to Italy with myriad sound snippets from all corners of the opera; back at PASE Platform he set about laying them out in the room. The recordings were then played back and re-recorded via a centrally fixed microphone, enabling the PASE team to create depth and movement for this compelling headset journey.
“We created a double layer for the recording,” he explains. “We used the main Soundscape ring and then placed six loudspeakers really close around the recording microphone to create depth. Soundscape was really great as, by having the speakers around you, you are able to form a sonic landscape. By recording 'in the ring' it's almost like creating pictures and then layering the picture on top of each other to achieve the end result. It's fascinating and highly effective."
As well as utilizing Soundscape for the arrangement of pre-recorded material, PASE also recorded live instruments and voices in the studio, relying on the spatial arrangement of the system to recreate the desired dimension of the final sonic output.
For those wanting to experience Les Secrets de l'Opéra, the experience will remain available in the Paris Opéra metro station for the next 10 years, scheduled to end in 2030. Travellers can step inside PASE’s recordings via QR code, using their own headphones.
