167,000 Speakers Drive Las Vegas’ Mega Venue
It’s been a long wait, but on July 20, 2023, the Sphere Entertainment Company invited journalists to a demo to get a sneak listen within the $2.3 billion, 17,600-seat Sphere at the Venetian Resort, the Las Vegas venue dedicated to immersive entertainment and live events that will open its doors to the public this fall. The venue features an audio system provided by Sphere Immersive Sound, a partnership between MSG Entertainment’s MSG Ventures subsidiary and Germany-based Holoplot, a leader in 3D sound technologies since its founding in 2011.
At the press event, James Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of MSG Entertainment and related companies (and a musician himself) noted that while the Sphere is engineered to immerse audiences with a unique multi-sensory entertainment experience, “sound, for a musician, is really the product.”
Unlike sports arenas in the 18,000 to 20,000-capacity range that are primarily used for loud and raucous basketball and hockey games in highly reverberant settings, the Sphere is designed specifically for an immersive entertainment experience. (While focusing on primarily on entertainment rather than team sports, however, the venue could still be used for marquee boxing, MMA, wrestling and Esports events as well as live concerts and AV experiences tailor made for the Sphere.)
The Sphere’s massive audio system was specifically developed for the venue’s unique curved interior. The system consists nearly 1,600 permanently installed and another 300 mobile Holoplot X1 loudspeaker modules, all promising to give engineers precise control of where sound goes in the venue. With each module housing a multitude of drivers, the venue boasts a total of 167,000 individually amplified loudspeaker drivers, backing up the venue’s claim to have installed the world’s largest concert-grade audio system.
As Holoplot noted, loudspeaker technology in large-scale venues can result in audio quality that diminishes as distance from the speakers increases, due to the uncontrolled nature of sound wave propagation. The Berlin-based company’s patented 3D Audio-Beamforming technology uses intelligent software algorithms to create unique, highly controlled, and more efficient soundwaves than conventional speakers, ensuring that levels and quality remain consistent from point of origin to destination — even over large distances.
Holoplot’s proprietary beamforming technology can also simultaneously send unique audio content to specific locations in the venue, creating the possibility for different sections to hear completely different content — such as languages, music or sound effects — promising a multitude of opportunities for truly customized and immersive audio experiences.
Holoplot’s wave field synthesis capabilities, meanwhile, give the Sphere access to a spatial audio rendering technique that can create virtual acoustic environments. With conventional audio technology, the perceived origin of a sound has traditionally been the location of the loudspeaker. With wave field synthesis, sound designers can create a virtual point of origin, which can then be placed in a precise spatial location. This enables audio to be directed to the listener so that it sounds close, even though the source is far away — for example, an audience member could hear a whisper that sounds like someone is talking directly in their ear.
The audio system has already won plaudits in the press. In a review of the audio demo posted on July 24, Jason Bracelin of the Las Vegas Review-Journal described his reaction to a sample of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” during the event. “[Bono’s] vocals emanate from down in front, but quickly become enveloping, his voice the silk in a sonic cocoon being spun around us. When the guitar solo kicks in, it’s as if a miniaturized, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-version of The Edge is ripping said lead from within the depths of your ear canal.”
From Live Shows to ‘Sphere Experiences’
The full-sized version of U2’s The Edge, who will be joining his bandmates to perform a series of 25 live concert residency shows titled U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere from Sept. 29 through Dec. 16, 2023, has already spoken enthusiastically about the promise of the Sphere at the Venetian as a concert venue. “The beauty of Sphere is not only the groundbreaking technology that will make it so unique, with the world’s most advanced audio system integrated into a structure which is designed with sound quality as a priority; it’s also the possibilities around immersive experiences in real and imaginary landscapes,” he noted in a statement. “In short, it’s a canvas of an unparalleled scale and image resolution, and a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We all thought about it and decided we’d be mad not to accept the invitation.”
If unique concert experiences featuring A-list artists offered at a premium price are undoubtedly part of the Sphere at the Venetian’s business plan — tickets for U2’s residency shows this fall are currently priced on Stubhub from hundreds to thousands of dollars per seat — the venue’s management will also be packing in audiences for preprogrammed multi-sensory experiences running as often as three times a day, year-round, within a much more affordable price range — from $49 to $199.
The first of these multi-sensory prerecorded AV productions, Postcard from Earth, makes its debut on Oct. 6, 2023. Called “Sphere Experiences,” these hour-long shows are produced specifically for the Las Vegas venue with an assist from Sphere Studios in Burbank, CA, where designers make use of a scaled-down dome shaped facility to create the final show product. That first immersive AV show, as described by its filmmaker/director Darren Aronofsky, is “a Sci-Fi journey deep into our future as our descendants reflect on our shared home,” a fitting kick-off, perhaps, for the venue’s AV wizardry.
With the Sphere’s acoustics and audio system and enormous wraparound 16K x 16K LED screen, the venue is promising a fully immersive AV experience for every audience member. For immersive events, however, the very best seats will be the 10,000 equipped with an infrasound haptic system and audio speakers so guests can “feel” the experience, with the vibrations synched with AV content such as the rumble of thunder or the roar of a motorcycle.
At 516 feet in width and 366 feet tall, the building is said to be the world’s largest spherical structure. The exterior LED display surface, called the Exosphere, measures 580,000 square feet and has already had an indelible impact on the Las Vegas skyline from the moment it was switched on, rivaling Las Vegas’ July 4th fireworks displays for visual attention as the giant sphere morphed in the blink of an eye from the moon to a basketball then to a series of mesmerizing abstract designs.
The Listening Experience
For the July 20 press event, a group of journalists were ushered inside the venue after leaving their cell phones, recording devices and cameras with security personnel at the entrance. [The strict embargo on the dissemination of photos and information about the Sphere was relaxed on July 24, when the company released more details about its audio system to the public.]
Upon entering the venue, visitors noticed a remarkable lack of reverberation within such a cavernous space. Totaling 13 million cubic feet, it’s said to be large enough to house the Statue of Liberty, stone pedestal included. Yet words can be spoken without the slightest hint of an echo. As it turns out, however, the venue’s sound system can be tweaked to make the space sound as cavernous or intimate as the sound engineers want from show to show — even during a show.
“Sphere Immersive Sound is a cornerstone of the custom-designed technology that will make Sphere unlike any venue, anywhere in the world, providing audio with unmatched clarity and precision to every guest, no matter where they are seated,” said David Dibble, CEO, MSG Ventures, a division of Sphere Entertainment.
As the cutaway illustration on this issue’s cover suggests, the 17,600 seats are arranged across multiple levels at a sharply raked angle. And those seats are designed to absorb a similar amount of sound whether they are occupied or empty, with special attention paid to the under-seat pans to ensure that they are not overly reflective when in the folded-up position – another clear sign that sound quality was a priority in the venue’s design process.
Beneath the tiers of seating, the Grand Entry’s Main Atrium also features an expansive, open design, with 5.7 million cubic feet of open space. (With immersive galleries, 23 VIP suites and additional standing-room-only areas accommodating an additional 3,000 people, the venue’s total capacity tops 20,000.)
After entering the performance space from the front of the bowl, the journalists were ushered to an elevator that took them to the fourth floor, where they walked down an aisle between rows of seats past an FOH control area staffed by a team of audio techs. There, they were met by MSG Entertainment CEO Dolan and other execs, including Dibble, along with Paul Freeman, principal audio artist, Sphere Entertainment Co., and Holoplot CEO Roman Sick.
Dibble, Freeman and Sick detailed how the venue’s matrix array solution governed by algorithms, helped address the Sphere’s biggest audio challenge: how to make an immersive audio system sound good within the venue’s vast open space, particularly when that sound system is concealed behind a 160,000 square foot curved inner LED display plane designed to wrap around the seating areas and provide a visually immersive effect with 16K x 16K resolution video.
Tapping a wireless tablet, Freeman served up some samples of music. Along with the aforementioned “Pride (In the Name of Love)” by U2, a sample from rock-fusion band Tauk that was “air-dropped from an iPhone” and presented with no EQ, and a sample of orchestral classical music with the various instruments clearly discernable within the space, complete with a panning effect that suggested the performers were somehow flying around the room.
While playing a sample of George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun,” recorded for the Beatle’s 1969 Abbey Road album, Freeman noted that older recordings, heard “in this environment, can still sound good” even if the recording technologies were limited at the time.
Next up was some bass heavy EDM music from Yello to showcase the power of the system’s low-end (pumped by about 400 Holoplot X1 MD80-S 3-way modules, each equipped an 18” subwoofer), followed by some energetic club music that sounded like Pitbull rocking out to a Lambada remix. For the final sample, Freeman played Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” giving listeners the ability to appreciate how each of the vocal parts appearing to be coming from different locations in the vast space, with Roger Taylor’s highest falsetto notes seemingly piercing the room from the very top of the dome.
Dibble noted that while people have been putting an emphasis on the sonic qualities of curved performance spaces since the construction of open-air amphitheaters in ancient Greece, the advanced technologies incorporated in the Holoplot sound system emerged as the only audio solution that would meet the Sphere’s specific needs. “No traditional approach would do it,” he said, also noting that “creating this experience required us to go far beyond existing audio technology and in Holoplot, we found a partner at the forefront of innovation to help achieve our vision and truly transform what is possible with audio.”
Enter Holoplot
Holoplot CEO Roman Sick addressed the group, comparing sound generated by traditional point-source speaker systems to the ripples from a pebble dropped in a pond. The sound waves fill the three-dimensional space, but the waves are uncontrolled as they disperse and bounce off obstacles in the vertical and horizontal plane.
Line arrays offer far more control, but for the past 10 years, Berlin-based Holoplot has devoted its R&D efforts on what Sick refers to as Matrix Arrays — which helps sound engineers pinpoint where they want the sound to go, and where there should be no sound. “We are not dropping one stone,” he said. “We are dropping a hundred, to form a unified wave,” with intelligent algorithms (and not mechanical movements) guiding the sound waves to the listeners’ ears.
As far back as 2016, Holoplot was deploying its patented 3D Audio-Beamforming technology to improve the intelligibility of P.A. announcements within a train station in Frankfurt, Germany, which allowed for multiple messages to be sent to specific groups of passengers on the platforms. And as it turns out, the same technology can be a boon to performance venues.
In a smaller-scale precursor to the Sphere installation, Holoplot and MSG Entertainment collaborated on a sonic upgrade to the audio system for the 2,894-seat Beacon Theatre on NYC’s Upper West Side. Owned by MSG Entertainment since 2006, the venue showcased its new Holoplot matrix array system last August with two acoustic shows featuring Trey Anastasio from Phish.
At the Sphere in Las Vegas, the matrix array system is scaled up considerably. Instead of the Beacon Theatre’s 28 MD80-S speakers (which have built-in subwoofers) and 24 MD96 speakers, the Sphere’s system makes use of a total 1,586 permanently installed loudspeaker modules, with 464 modules built into the venue’s massive proscenium array structure. (The Beacon’s proscenium array, by contrast, consists of 24 modules.)
And while the Beacon’s Holoplot system is hefty — weighing in at more than 12 tons (up from the previous two-ton installed line array speaker system serving the venue), the scale of the system at the Sphere can be seen in its total weight stats: 395,120 pounds, or just under 200 tons.
“From the beginning, Holoplot has been focused on radically transforming audio technology, rethinking the underlying physics of sound reproduction as we know it,” noted Sick. “Working alongside Sphere Studios on Sphere Immersive Sound has been a truly thrilling opportunity for our team — challenging us to extend the boundaries of our technology at an unparalleled scale and create a revolutionary listening experience.”
Shaping Sound Waves with Algorithms
As Sick noted, algorithms that make use of machine learning play a key role in how the Sphere’s massive system directs sound into the venue. Along with the ability to ensure that the sound system is providing a uniform mix to every seat in the venue, the algorithms can automatically compensate for any audio transmission losses due to the placement of the speakers behind the venue’s massive interior LED surface.
Algorithms are also used to automatically adjust and compensate for changes in atmospheric conditions such as temperature and humidity, responding to changes detected by atmospheric measuring devices set up around the venue, and they can also make sure that video imagery is not affected by the sound passing through the LED plane.
The audio system has two basic venue coverage modes. With Full Venue Coverage Mode, each Sphere Immersive Sound Audio Array covers the entire venue evenly. This is the option that will be used for mostly for large concerts and residencies. Immersive Coverage Mode, by contrast, only covers Sphere’s 10,000 immersive seats. This mode will be used for Sphere Experiences, including Postcard from Earth, and as part of the audio demo, Paul Freeman played a sample of audio where the vibrations and audio effects from the seats could be felt.
Fine-tuning the Mix
One concern some audio engineers might have is the learning curve they’ll need to face when moving from a conventional stereo line array mix to a more immersive audio environment created by the world’s largest concert-grade audio system within the Sphere. Although there are undoubtedly plenty of opportunities to delve into the details of the system, as Dibble noted, it doesn’t have to be a “heavy lift.” The Sphere Immersive Sound system can reproduce creative audio content from a simple mono source to 256 channels of granularity.
Sphere and Holoplot also have hardware and software tools to help artists and engineers create content before they even set foot in the venue. These proprietary tools include modeling, prediction software and system tuning tools. For many, Dibble noted, it will be more of a tweak than an ordeal. The demo team also assured the visitors that, as far as U2 is concerned, FOH engineer Joe O’Herlihy, who has mixed the band for decades in all kinds of venues, is fully on board and looking forward to the 25 residency shows this fall.
Beyond the Sphere at the Venetian’s late September grand opening, other Sphere projects are on the drawing board, including a venue identical to the Las Vegas Sphere proposed for London. And given the response to the Beacon Theatre’s Holoplot installation, it seems likely that MSG Entertainment will be taking a close look at potential sonic upgrades at its non-spherical venues as well, perhaps even including their namesake venue, Madison Square Garden.
The Sphere at the Venetian will open its doors on Sept. 29 with the first of U2’s 25 performances of U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere, and the Darren Aronofsky-directed Sphere Experience, Postcard from Earth, will debut on Oct. 6. Tickets are currently on sale at www.thespherevegas.com.
