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XBOX© Launch
Timax Triumphs at Microsoft's XBOX© Launch
Sound Designer Chris Ekers reports from the Microsoft XBOX© launch at Pierre Cardin's House, Cannes, October 2001
The XBOX©, due to be released in Europe next year, is Microsoft's answer to Playstation© and Dreamcast©. It's a game that plugs into the television, but which takes audio and visual effects into a territory of its own, with 5.1 surround sound and incredible graphics that can provide limitless camera angles.
The launch - in October 2001 - took place in the circular garage of French designer Pierre Cardin's incredible, labyrinthine house in the south of France, the roof of which doubles as a helipad.
The brief was to deliver 360 degrees of coverage for both voice and music for a presentation, a dinner with an awards ceremony and a disco, to five hundred people standing in a twenty-meter diameter space.
There were four podium positions around the perimeter of the room from which presenters, wearing lapel radio microphones, could explain what the XBOX© could do, supported by promotional video playback and live cameras. This unique scenario lent itself perfectly to utilising Delta's new Timax 8-in x 16-out delay matrix unit - and probably couldn't have been done without it.
Once on site, one of the podiums was cut, leaving podiums at the main stage or North position, and the West and East positions of the room. The ceiling was only 3.5m high at the highest point and, apart from lighting, rigging real estate was further pushed to a premium with forty-five 27" TV monitors being flown from the roof. Two circular rings of barrel were suspended from the roof about its centre, one of seven meters diameter, the other of 15 meters. The inner ring had eighteen 27" TV monitors, over each of which Delta's audio team out-rigged a d&b E3, focussed towards the perimeter of the room for vocal reinforcement. In addition, each podium had a 'local' vocal system comprising of two d&b C6 and two d&b E3 loudspeakers. Of the eighteen E3's hung from the inner ring, four were focussed into the centre of the room - each in line with a podium - to provide a delayed vocal fill for the respective local podium system. These E3's were delayed outside of Timax using two BSS TCS804s.
Music playback was provided from six sources evenly distributed around the perimeter of the room behind the louvered walls of the set. A d&b C7/B2 combination was situated left and right of the stage/disco position and a d&b C6/EAW KF850 sub combination at the remaining four positions, providing a full circle of sources for playback each controlled from a dedicated Timax output.
Each podium system (plus the delayed centre facing E3 in each position) took a Timax output and the remaining six Timax outputs were distributed among the fourteen outward-facing E3s flown on the inner ring.
The show opened with a video in which the playback moved around the room according to the action. To spice up the AV experience, we added a couple of sound effects of a fighter jet flying over head and a helicopter circling the drop zone, as depicted in the video. With separate inputs into Timax, we were able to manoeuver these effects, played back from a time-code-locked Akai DR16, independently from the main sound track, giving added realism to the effect whilst remaining perfectly in sync.
All the playback during the show came from VT, which also provided time-code to synchronise to. Each presenter was preceded by a five-second sting, also played back from VT. As each presenter spoke from a different podium, we wanted the sting to follow this movement. Naturally, the vocal sound was sourced to the relevant podium providing the right 'image' to each location. The sting however was programmed so that it started off in stereo at the current podium position, swung around the room, and ended in stereo at the new podium position. Only Timax could have done this. There were three podiums and therefore six possible movements. Although the sting, music and picture, was the same each time, we duplicated the stings so that we had six separate time-code timings from which Timax could chase - and the whole thing worked amazingly well. Once a satisfactory series of cues, including the dynamic movement of program, was created for the sting, the procedure for moving between each podium position was simply a question of programming Timax. By creating new cues with the time-code times associated with each sting, and therefore podium movement, and manually recording the dynamic moves relevant to the Timax image definitions for each podium, the system became totally automated.
Whenever VT played the relevant sting, Timax locked up to the incoming time-code and ran the sequence of cues. Also, for each sting, the movement of microphones was included in the cues ensuring that presenters were heard from whichever podium they were speaking from, and the idea of presenters being heard from a podium position the other side of the room was impossible.
One major advantage of the Timax system in this situation was the ability to program off-line. In one instance, we had to allow for - and were able to achieve - a new and unprogrammed event. By programming off-line, we were able in a matter of minutes to isolate vocal reinforcement to a local point for a small impromptu meeting the localisation of which had not been asked for.
Timax is a very powerful tool for events such as this and, whilst it takes some time to set up and requires more amplifier channels and loudspeakers, the results are astounding and puts the live audio department finally in the realms of the Vari-Speaker domain.
In addition to the main garage area, a system was installed for the outdoor reception area to provide announcement and ambient playback facilities
Delta's audio team comprised Chris Ekers, who designed the system and programmed Timax, Adrian Bradley, who mixed, and Annette Guilfoyle, who ran radio mics. Two very good guys, Pierre-Louis and GG assisted with the installation from local supplier, Arpège.
Agency: PCI FITCH
