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The December reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris after the 2019 fire was all about a visual spectacle, from the rejuvenated masonry to the golden reliquary housing the Crown of Thorns. But hidden between the grooves of the fluted pillars was a series of invisible speakers, all connected to a custom-made sound system installed by French audio firm L-Acoustics. “And some of the speakers who cannot be seen in Notre-Dame are the same ones who cannot be seen in this room,” he says. L-acoustics‘Mary Beth Henson.
We’re in a showroom at the company’s north London headquarters and the absence of audio equipment is, as Henson points out, conspicuous. L-Acoustics calls the room Hyriss, a hyper-real immersive sound space – its purpose is to provide the best sound experience. Behind the custom-made green fabric-covered panels on the wall are several sets of speakers spaced about five feet apart, with an additional 12-grill discreetly embedded in the ceiling.
Even without music When playing, the room itself sounds extraordinary: sweetly reverberant. This is a space whose sound characteristics can be controlled; If you want it to sound like a cathedral, a bathroom, or a small concert hall, you can do that. Whether you want it to function as a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound movie theater, a karaoke booth, a sub-bass nightclub, or just an acoustically resonant space to sit and play the piano, that can happen with the touch of a button. And this is not just a proof of concept; Any room larger than 45 square meters can be transformed into a Hyriss by L-Acoustics, after consultation with an architect or interior designer (from about 3,550 euros per square meter).
All of the technology behind it, from the engineering of the speakers to the algorithms that spread the sound around the room, was forged in the world of live music. As a young man, L-Acoustics founder Christian Heil was inspired to move from his background in particle physics to pro audio after attending a Pink Floyd show where the band was experimenting with quadraphonic sound, an early manifestation of spatial audio. By 1992, he and his company had produced the first line array, a gently curved, vertically mounted speaker arrangement that is now a familiar sight in stadiums and festivals, but was revolutionary back then. In 2016, the firm created L-ISA (pronounced “Eliza”), an immersive audio tool that allows artists to create spatial soundscapes.
“You are standing in the room where L-ISA was developed and demonstrated,” says the director of home and yachtNick Fichte. “Christian put on some music and said, ‘You know, I think I just created the best hi-fi system in the world.'” While the Hyriss’ extraordinary sound is no surprise, its flexibility is. A Dolby Atmos stream from Tidal It’s all enveloping. The chest-thumping bass is a testament to the power of the sound system, but it can also represent a John Williams orchestral piece (created with L-ISA) from the conductor’s perspective, with horns, cellos and glockenspiel all distinct and separate spatially.
Even standard stereo music can, with L-Acoustics technology, be distributed throughout the room, with AI detecting guitars, drums and vocals in real time and giving them their own space. I was briefly allowed to listen to some music I had participated in; Hi-fi aficionados often make bold claims that certain speakers allow very specific elements of recorded music to be heard with new clarity, but this was the real thing.
Investing in a surround sound setup is traditionally an exhausting task: buying the elements of a 5.1 or 7.1 system, placing them in a room, constantly wondering if they are in the right place, and adjusting the settings accordingly. And all that effort at the service of a single position in the room, the so-called “sweet spot,” where everything sounds perfect. “Hyriss arose partly from Christian’s inability to decide where to place the speakers in a large room in his own home in the south of France,” says Fichte. “He had an idea that made him think: Well, if I put speakers everywhere, I can use the room however I want.” There is no single point where Hyriss sounds better. Clarity, volume, sense of acoustic space are distributed evenly and beautifully. The sweet spot is everywhere.