During the ISE the public had the opportunity to learn more about the whole d&b workflow and how it led them to current solutions, such as d&b Soundscape.
Far from the buzzing Barcelona Fair during the days of ISE, at the Auditori de Cornellà, d&b audiotechnik held a series of demos in which the team explained the history of d&b to a large audience of curious people, from its origins to its products and more recent developments, such as sound object-based audio with d&b Soundscape, acoustic shells or the new XSL series.
Wolfgang Schulz, team leader of the product management installation department, told us about the two founders Jürgen Daubert and Rolf Belz, the “d” and “b” of the name, and how in 1981, in a garage they laid the first stone that led the company to be a world leader in the business. Towards the end of the decade, d&b moved to its current location in Backnang, near Stuttgart. Two principles have accompanied the company from the very first steps, born from the passion for audio, which should be something shared, a unique experience, but equal for everyone, hence the first concept, summarized with the motto Democracy for listeners; and the second that the speakers and electronics must be designed systematically.
We go a bit more in depth with the explanation of the company’s workflow, starting from the design of a system on the ArrayCalc software and the remote control of the amplifiers via R1, the passage of signal in the network, a possible step to the DS100, the processor for immersive audio, finally to the amplifiers and speakers. Diving deeper into Soundscape, Ralf Zuleeg, head of the team dedicated to it, emphasises how we are constantly immersed in soundscapes, these have inspired the vision of a world in which audio is as we would hear it in the reality. The hardware on which the foundations of the revolutionary audio solution are built is the DS100. The idea was born from the concept of recreating a more natural sound for the audience, who could immediately experience the differences with a demo of the system compared to a normal stereo, in which the image is invariably shifted to the right or left, except for the lucky few in the centre of the room. However, like many great tools, its destiny is to surpass initial projects and already today it proves itself as a standard for creating unique content and exciting and engaging live experiences.
While it can basically improve how a concert feels, it is also possible to design entire events around the tools offered by the two optional modules En-Scene and En-Space. The first is in fact the positioning tool that allows up to 64 sound objects to be moved in space, faithfully representing what happens on stage, or – based on the creativity of those who use it – completely new worlds.
Introducing the other module, En-Space, we have Simon Heinze, who personally took care of its development. This module allows to emulate the acoustics of nine internationally renowned spaces, whose convolutions are collected inside the processor. The rooms were personally measured by Simon and his team and are of different sizes and materials, in order to have a library of options to choose from with different lengths and frequency responses. He then showed us a practical demonstration of the use of this reverb with the acoustic chamber, of which he gave as an example the first test performed in Italy at the Ravenna Festival at the Pala de André. In fact, the sports hall has challenging acoustics to say the least, which affects both the public, but above all, the artists on stage and the use of the acoustic chamber is aimed precisely at improving their listening experience. d&b’s acoustic shell, like a real wooden one, provides the first reflections, but without the weight and encumbrance that would entail.
At this point, a quartet originally from Stuttgart, like d&b, allowed us to hear the difference in listening with En-Space active, in fact the room was immediately drier as soon as En-Space would be turned off. The audience was then invited to the stage, around the musicians, where they had the opportunity to try the acoustic shell together with the musicians. Finally, Janko Ramuscak introduced the -SL series, of which the smallest model has recently been released, the XSL of which we were able to listen to a demo with a mono cluster consisting of six cabinets.
