schallgeber

Leading spatial audio designer Henrik Oppermann has spent his career pushing the boundaries of 3D sound. An expert in his field, he’s created innovative soundscapes for film, TV and music, and held commendable positions at the likes of Sennheiser and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

His latest project – a uniquely compact mobile studio ideal for field and on-site recording – packs his years of expertise into the back of an RV. Using solar powered mobile batteries and technology from Merging, Neumann and Sennheiser, Oppermann’s new space enables recording almost anywhere off-grid.

 “I was working in new spaces and kept thinking about how great it would be to have a recording facility on-site,” he begins. “This is where the idea for the mobile studio came to life. In the past you would have needed a huge production truck to achieve what we have with the mobile studio, but with the development of Merging Technologies’ networked audio, we have kitted out the small van with some ground-breaking equipment.”

“We can create recordings with up to 120 high-quality audio channels anywhere, whether it's outside or inside. This means that any kind of field recording can be captured in all spatial audio formats. Additionally, orchestras can break out to all sorts of interesting natural or artificial acoustic spaces. Recording musical pieces that have a connection to nature can now be captured in a forest at dawn chorus, for example.”

The mobile studio is a converted van using technology that you’d find in some of the most advanced recording facilities. Using a 3D 4.0 monitoring setup with four Neumann KH80 loudspeakers and a Merging Anubis as the controller, Oppermann has created a game-changing setup that captures sound in its most natural state. The system is managed via Neumann’s MA1 speaker correction software to ensure the creation of a critical listening environment, and it can also be extended with a centre speaker and two additional height speakers, which bring the recording to a 5.0.2 Dolby Atmos setup.

For recording in spatial audio, Oppermann uses Sennheiser’s AMBEO Cube with eight Sennheiser MKH 800 twin microphones fixed to the Grace Design Immersive Microphone Array. This ensures that the setup can cover any type of recording. The microphone rig is being fed to Merging’s HAPI interface, which then connects via a network cable to the Anubis in the mobile studio. With the network cable, the studio can cover distances of up to 100-metres away from the van.

“It’s a dream of mine to create something like this,” furthers Oppermann. “A lot of the time you’re completely limited to recording studios and concert halls, but I think there is so much more to recording music. I don’t think this only applies to orchestras either, if you look at electronic music you have a lot of compositions that use field recordings and I think the studio is going to offer an interesting way of contextualising music and taking it out into a different environment.”

“All of this would be impossible without technology from Merging. I can integrate it seamlessly into the van because it’s so compact. If I was recording 120 channels without networked audio I would need a lot of cables, but with Merging I only need one. Using the family of brands together just made a lot of sense when I was approaching this project. The audio quality is incredible, the system is reliable, versatile and easy-to-use, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what we can achieve once we start working on more field-specific projects.”