Veteran tour sound professionals Ken ‘Pooch’ Van Druten and Dennie Miller will be participating in private demo sessions of Meyer Sound’s Spacemap Go spatial sound design and live mixing tool at Soundcheck in Nashville from Monday, 29 to 31 March. The sessions are scheduled in conjunction with the Spring Training 2021 event at the same location, presented by the Nashville chapter of the Audio Engineering Society (AES).
The hands-on demo sessions Monday and Tuesday are by invitation only. To reserve a time, contact sales@meyersound.com. The AES Spring Training is open to all who register. To attend the event, register here.
Van Druten has mixed FOH for an array of top artists, ranging from Whitney Houston and Justin Bieber to Iron Maiden and Jay-Z. Miller’s credits as FOH or systems engineer include Volbeat and Miguel. The two touring luminaries will conclude the event by hosting a panel discussion together with Josh Dorn-Fehrmann, Meyer Sound’s technical support specialist.
Van Druten has devoted some of his recent spare time working in his home studio with a scaled-down Spacemap Go system that nevertheless can simulate arena-size concert scenarios.
“I’ve had extensive demo sessions with other immersive systems, and by comparison I’m very impressed with Spacemap Go,” he said. “For me, the way Spacemap Go applies amplitude-based panning makes it far better for working with trajectories. For example, if you take a guitar and spin it around the room, the others pale in comparison to what you can do — and what you hear — with Spacemap Go.”
The demo system in Soundcheck Studio D will comprise 32 self-powered loudspeakers for full 360° immersive capability. But, with the push of a button on an iPad, the system can be instantly reconfigured for quad or expanded wide frontal. The demonstrations also will show how the same Spacemap Go object-based trajectories can be scaled to work with greater or lesser loudspeaker counts.
A variety of multi-track source material will be provided by Meyer Sound, with additional tracks from the two guest presenters. System input will be via an Avid S6L equipped with an MLN-192 Milan protocol interface to enable direct network connection to the two GALAXY 816 processors providing 32 input by 32 output capability. Van Druten will pair the S6L with a Waves eMotion LV1 for his sessions.
Although Spacemap Go affords extraordinarily subtle and complex spatial mixing capabilities, most users find the learning curve is surprisingly flat. “I had about a half-hour session with Josh and I was up and running,” recalled Van Druten. “I told him I would call back in a day or two with questions, but I never had to make the call.”
Invitation-only demo sessions are scheduled at 10am, 2pm and 4pm on Monday and Wednesday, with a single 10am session on Tuesday. The panel discussion at 6pm on Wednesday is open, but attendee numbers may be limited by safe distancing practices.
Spacemap Go is a spatial sound design and live mixing tool that employs a free iPad app to leverage the inherent processing power of the thousands of GALAXY Network Platforms already in use. Open Sound Control (OSC) support provides integration with sound design software such QLab as well as DAWs including Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Logic Pro X, and Reaper.
