Helping a renowned musician achieve a longstanding goal of immersive audio

Immersive spatial audio recording and playback techniques have existed since the 1970s. Their application to recorded music or capture of live music remains relatively experimental but is garnering interest as digital systems allow reproduction of accurate spatial audio more accessible, including over headphones.

Through decades of acoustical research and development, Arup has applied these techniques to capture sound of existing spaces, and create accurate sound renderings of new buildings, renovations, refurbishments, and recreations of spaces that no longer exist. Our unmatched capabilities in the field, brought together in our SoundLab environments first launched in 1998, have helped guide project constituents through complex decision making, and create spaces of acoustical character, delight and wonder.

Many of Arup’s designers are also active musicians, artists, and performers, so we were eager to apply these skills to capture live arts and music. A series of experiments led us to our initial collaboration with Lou Reed in 2009 to capture a landmark performance in full spatial audio.

With a longstanding interest in pushing both the artistic and technical boundaries of popular music, Reed began experimenting with, and releasing, recordings with binaural and quadraphonic components since the mid-1970s. In the decades since he made a number of attempts to further develop his work with 3D audio, especially in search of capturing live performance the way he experiences it on stage, but was consistently disappointed by the results.

Despite skepticism that the ideal results were achievable, Reed worked with Arup to record two performances of his Metal Machine Trio at New York’s Blender Theater in 2009. After hearing the 13.4 channel mix replayed in our SoundLab, he was extremely pleased, pronouncing the recording “the best live recording I’ve ever heard!”