Sonic Sphere is an ever-evolving concert hall for the 21st Century. Conceived in the tradition of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kugelauditorium, a nearly spherical concert hall built for the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Sonic Sphere is the brainchild of Ed Cooke, a British cognitive science expert and entrepreneur, sound architect Merijn Royaards, and engineering director Nicholas Christie.
Since 2021, Cooke and his team have built Sonic Spheres in France, the United Kingdom, Mexico and the United States, including Burning Man. Each time, the hall has grown bigger. Per a statement, the sphere at The Shed in New York City is the 11th and most advanced sphere, after iterations of increasing size and technical sophistication.
The result is the first Sonic Sphere to be suspended in air, costing more than $2 million. The infrastructure includes 1,178 steel struts, 3,500 yards of cloth and 12 structural cables supporting the sphere from the roof. The vast, 65-foot-diameter spherical concert hall has a capacity of roughly 250 people, who sit or lie in netted areas.
Sonic Sphere Architecture
Photo credit: Sonic Sphere Team.
This new architectural space also features immersive, 3-D sound and light explorations of music by artists. Within the sphere, guests are surrounded by 124 meticulously arranged loudspeakers that move sound above, below, through and around the body. Sound and light waves are sculpted into spatialized, temporal architectures, according to a statement. Together, they create hyperreal and deeply multisensory, shared experiences. To power the immersive experience, the creative team behind the Sonic Sphere turned to the amplifiers from LEA Professional, says the company.
“We were amazed with the LEA Amplifiers,” remarks Merijn Royaards, creative director at Sonic Sphere. “The footprint of each amplifier was a lot smaller, they perform over and above what we were used to, and they’ve got a really helpful interface and an excellent way of tuning a system, which we were missing very much with our previous solution. And suddenly, many previously difficult or impossible things were easy for us to accomplish.”
Sonic Sphere installed 31 Connect Series 354D amplifiers to power the immersive audio experience. With 96 kHz-capable Dante and AES67 connectivity options, the IoT-enabled 4-channel 354D provides 350 watts per channel into 2, 4, and 8 ohms, and 70Vrms and 100Vrms. The CS354D includes advanced DSP with 96 kHz linear phase FIR crossover filters, acoustically transparent look ahead RMS and peak limiters, and 32-bit floating-point DSP with built-in sample rate converters. It also supports high-Z (70V or 100V) and low-Z selectable by channel and features two Smart Power Bridge channels, says the company.
Impact of Installation
Photo credit: Sonic Sphere Team
The Connect Series also features cloud connectivity, a benefit for anyone maintaining the systems. With LEA Cloud, AV teams can remotely control and monitor the amplifiers regardless of the location or time of day. Whether from within the sphere or a different continent, controlling the Connect Series amplifiers from afar helps teams work more efficiently. As a result, it helps reduce travel and saves time and money, says LEA Professional
“Sonic Sphere really is a laboratory for the senses, where technology and art come alive,“ adds Brian Pickowitz, VP of marketing at LEA Professional. “We’re very proud to have played a role in such a transcendental experience.”
