INSTALL PIONEER

Rethinking home entertainment installations: architectural rendering of project under way featuring Island Prestige

I can’t think of a single supplier with greater commitment to end-toend project support across the CI repertoire.

Mark Laird, Lairds of Troon

(loves our project support)

THE L WORD

Dr Christian Heil, President & Founder, L-Acoustics, in an exclusive EI interview from our Install Pioneer Series. In this issue we present part two.

Tell us a little about the HQ in Highgate, how can installers and visitors get to experience the systems for themselves?

Our Highgate immersive sound space is now open to visitors by appointment. We welcome integrators, music industry executives, musicians, potential clients, and members of media on a daily basis. The sonically curious can get in touch via the contact form on our website l-acoustics-creations. com /contact.

We look forward to introducing you to the space for a moment of pleasure and escape. Our immersive sound spaces in Paris and Los Angeles are also equipped to host visitors who want to experience our technology. Please get in touch.

What is next for the brand in the home and out on the live circuit? Any new products being worked on?

Beginning with live sound, we are looking forward to the rollout of our new full range loudspeaker K3 which fills a space in our product range between the impressive K2 used on major tours, and Kara II, a perennial bestseller. It’s an ideal speaker for the restart where show capacity may be reduced in some instances as we gradually and safely return to the live events we love.

We are also eager to see Contour XO, an IEM developed in collaboration with Jerry Harvey’s team at JH Audio, serve live sound engineers on tour and in the field. Many have related that they view it as a valuable tool to reproduce the L-Acoustics sonic signature either at the mixing desk or in preparation for a tour. In addition to this professional use, we view Contour XO as a true full bandwidth Hi-Fi in-ear to enjoy music in Hi-Res anytime, anywhere.

We recently released L-ISA Studio, software that enables object-based mixing on a laptop with binaural emulation. This greatly simplifies production of content in L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound and allows users to output that content in multiple formats. I’d encourage sonic creators to explore our 30-day free trial at l-isa-immersive.com/create.

Returning to L-Acoustics Creations specifically, in our view, we offer the right technology at the perfect time, a time when audio is cool again. In the past few weeks or months, every major music streaming service has made an announcement that they will be offering Hi-Res or spatial audio moving forward. This is a massive leap forward after having

Christian in conversation with Guillaume Le Nost, Executive Director of Creative Technologies (left), and Sherif el Barbari, Director of L-ISA labs. In 2011, Christian assembled this core team to begin exploring the spatial audio technology that would become L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound

valued convenience above quality for quite some time. End users will come to realise that a high resolution audio source can only be as impactful as the sound system upon which it is played. L-Acoustics has a range of premium pro solutions for connoisseurs who truly value sound whether in residential or other architectural settings.

Additionally, immersive audio has become the threshold-level expectation - driven by experiences in gaming, virtual reality, and cinema. At the high end of home integration, this expectation determines what is specified. End users want to bring blockbuster cinema in Dolby Atmos or DTS home or bring the live concert or nightclub experience home. This has become fully achievable with professional audio solutions such as those offered by L-Acoustics Creations.

Finally, we want to push the boundaries of the present paradigm beyond the dedicated cinema room or multi-purpose media room to transform the central living space into a ‘sound space’ capable of delivering the full range of entertainment options with a single installation: concert-grade music listening and livestreaming, cinema, gaming, but also entirely new experiences such as digital art enjoyment and immersive environments dedicated to wellness.

As we look to the future of L-Acoustics Creations and of sound in general, we are increasingly focused on ‘sound architecture’, a convergence of home entertainment, technology integration, and architecture into a new way of thinking. We envisage a comprehensive sonic ecosystem involving architects and AV specialists to make sound and transformative acoustics a part of the living space itself. The all-in-one sound space would become the multi-purpose entertainment, cultural, and wellness hub of the modern home, built into the design itself. This sound space would benefit from advanced Immersive Hyperreal Sound, but also from options to use sound to enhance the room feel with virtual acoustics, to DJ, perform and create with sound for those inclined to do so, or to enjoy sound art on its own or paired with visual digital creations.

Sound can offer extraordinary sensory experiences. Spatialized audio and the resulting physical sensations are an invitation to dream, meditate, or become awed and energized by journeys that can be musical, atmospheric, or purely imaginary. We have barely begun to explore the vast possibilities of sound. Do you have any favourite artists or content to listen to on L- Acoustics Creations?

Our Island immersive sound space plays a dedicated format called Bubbles. Bubbles are usually a bespoke commission by a collector or a creation by an artist. As the L-Acoustics research team was designing Island, I found myself in the privileged position of being able to commission this new sound art myself. So our first creations feature music that I love: works by Debussy and Chopin performed by the talented pianist Jeremy Brown; Daphnis and Chloé by Ravel performed by the orchestra Les Siècles conducted by FrançoisXavier Roth; SPIRITO, a collection of bel canto arias performed by the renowned soprano Marina Rebeka.

We are able to share a few recordings from live shows presented in L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound such as alt-J, Aerosmith or Mark Knopfler. These are quite special – close your eyes and you are there.

The team in Highgate finds that our immersive sound spaces are fantastic for listening to electronic music, either in Dolby Atmos or using a third-party processor to upmix from stereo to spatialized audio. I find that whatever the genre, as long as the underlying track is well mixed, details really come to life. We’ve even had a few high-profile musician visitors listen to their own recordings and discover things they didn’t know were there!

What do you get up to away from work? Any hobbies or other interests we should know about?

I have enjoyed every moment of my working experience. Since 1984, the L-Acoustics project has constantly evolved offering me an immense intellectual satisfaction, a never-ending source of new knowledge gained from so many different sectors. It has also been a unique human adventure, made of challenges & successes, and the meeting of true friends who happen to be also on the board of L-Acoustics.

Away from work, my life is pretty simple. My lovely wife Bea and I are vegan, that implies a kind of discipline on our behaviours and life choices. She introduced me to yoga and I love these moments where music, sound art, meditation & yoga offer a true source of wellbeing.

L-Acoustics l-acoustics-creations.com

L-Acoustics Syva loudspeakers deployed on location at the Louvre Museum for a Louis Vuitton fashion show.

Please promote her immediately. Or make her Prime Minister. The world needs more Abigails and Julies.

Nick Sedgwick, Cre8tive Rooms

(loves our customer services)

Do you have any insight on when the live and festival sector might be able to get back to normal?

More than insights, we hold onto hope and see many positive signs that live music is slowly but surely poised to return to our lives. We have missed it terribly and our hearts go out to our many live events industry collaborators who have been sidelined and deprived of work during this terrible time. More than anything, we look forward to seeing and hearing them back in action. They are essential workers too. Culture is essential.