Spacemap Go has designs on Studio 9
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The principal partner in Studio 9 venture is FreshGrass Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to preserving, supporting and creating innovative grassroots music. Studio 9 is already proving a valuable adjunct to the FreshGrass Festivals - staged at nearby MASS MoCA since 2011 and now also in Bentonville, Arkansas - in developing and promoting new generations of roots music artists.
“There is a shared vision and a shared ecosystem between Studio 9 and FreshGrass,” says the foundation’s founder and president, Chris Wadsworth. “Our objective is to turn Studio 9 into a beacon of creativity and innovation. One of the wonderful things about this building is that, with Constellation, you can tune the room to the composition, so it is more like an art installation than a concert venue.”
Another pivotal player at Studio 9 is Dave Dennison, a long-time Meyer Sound associate whose new title as curator encompasses a broad swath of creative and technical roles, from artist development through studio engineering. Dennison was originally brought in to supervise 2019 recordings by the Kronos Quartet, but was convinced to stay on in a permanent role.
“Studio 9 is a great place to record,” emphasises Dennison, “because it offers more freedom for musicians. With Constellation, they are not tied to a recording session where they need headphones. It is much more like a free-form rehearsal space.”
The recent addition of Spacemap Go took Studio 9’s potential up yet another notch. “Spacemap Go is an extremely powerful tool,” says Dennison. “In a live setting it offers the engineer the ability to fly things around the venue. You are not tied to two speakers in a stereo field, or even a typical surround mix. Here, you are completely immersed in close to fifty speakers, all individually addressable, so you can fly an instrument or voice anywhere. All the trajectories can be saved in sync with the music, so you have a beautifully spatialized mix that can be replayed here, or even at other venues equipped with Spacemap Go.”
Both Constellation and Spacemap Go use the same complement of 37 full range, self-powered loudspeakers (MM‑4XP and UP‑4slim) and 10 MM‑10XP miniature subwoofers. Constellation also utilises 16 miniature cardioid microphones for ambient sensing and a D‑Mitri digital audio platform to host the patented VRAS acoustical algorithm. Spacemap Go is driven by three Galaxy 816 processors.
The Studio 9 control room is centred around an Avid S6 mixing console with monitoring via three Meyer Sound Acheron Designer loudspeakers and an X‑400C compact cinema subwoofer.
System integrator for the project was Parsons Audio under the direction of managing partner Roger Talkov, with Matt Dailey serving as project manager for the Spacemap Go upgrade.
“The Constellation installation was challenging because of the precision tolerances required, which was complicated by the conical roof shape and ceiling system,” notes Talkov. “That made microphone and speaker positioning extremely difficult in the 3D space. The payoff in attention to detail was quick commissioning and a fantastic textbook outcome. The musicians that played in Studio 9 when it first opened raved about how easy and comfortable it was for them to perform.”
