Domaine des Étangs is the largest 5-star ‘hotel resort’ in France. Located in Massignac, it spans a thousand acres of unspoiled natural land including forests, pastures, and ponds. This exceptional resort features an eleventh-century castle, fully renovated and decorated with contemporary artworks, detailed landscaping, six tenant farms, a vegetable garden, a wellness center, Gallo-Roman baths, two swimming pools, a floating tennis court, and a gastronomic Michelin-starred restaurant. Among its many facilities La Laiterie, a former dairy, has been transformed into a new gallery space dedicated to exhibitions celebrating the ‘Meeting of Art and Nature’.
By collaborating with the Amadeus experts early in the installation process, we were able to eliminate the usual aesthetic drawbacks of speakers while ensuring a sound quality at a level rivaling the most famous concert halls.
said Manuel Gomez, architect and music lover, who was in charge of the renovation work for La Laiterie at the Domaine des Étangs.
The sound systems was designed in a circular layout to enhance the visitor experience and to adapt to the geometric, technical, and aesthetic constraints in the Laiterie gallery. The installation features 44 speakers made by Amadeus and the HOLOPHONIX spatial sound processor.
The specification was very complex. Mrs. Garance Primat, the owner of the Domaine des Étangs, is a great music lover and a contemporary art collector. She wished to turn this former 18th-century barn into a place where past, present, and future art would meet to serve culture and presentation. This space had to be able to host art exhibitions, events, acoustic or amplified music, electro-acoustic music creations, etc., without having to modify, reconfigure or move speakers according to the application. The sound system had to be as versatile, scalable and integrated as possible. It appeared obvious to develop our project around the HOLOPHONIX processor.
said Gaëtan Byk, CEO of Amadeus.
Mezzanines excluded, the hall is 23-meter long and 9-meter high (75x30 ft). Thirty-two (32) Amadeus PMX 5 coaxial speakers are integrated at inferior purlins at mezzanine height: ten evenly-spaced speakers lengthwise and six speakers across the width.
Eight low-frequency Amadeus ABB 12 bespoke subwoofer speakers are integrated into the low section of the walls, spread out with four speakers on each side lengthwise along the walls. In addition, a new purpose-designed ‘slim bass’ speaker, named UFD 215, is integrated under each mezzanine.
The audio system is built around the spatial sound processor HOLOPHONIX. The integrated hardware and software product was designed by Amadeus in collaboration with the STMS (Sciences et Technologies de la Musique et du Son), a laboratory founded in 1995 and hosted in the IRCAM premises, in association with CNRS, the Sorbonne Université, the Ministère de la Culture, and the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique.
The HOLOPHONIX processor ensures a specified coherency between all speakers, each one receiving a dedicated audio signal. Several standard presets for HOLOPHONIX were designed on location according to the rooms’ specifications to enhance the system versatility and adaptability according to the needs of the installation or event.
The basic audio configuration uses three virtual sources, and synthesizes the signal on all loudspeakers, according to the WFS (Wave Field Synthesis) principles. The first source is stereophonic, it processes the output signal of the Lumin U1 player/streamer, used to play high-resolution music tracks.
Most audio signals come from sources like TIDAL or Qobuz. They are played in native PCM format, with sample frequencies of 44.1 to 192kHz, with 16-bit or 24-bit resolution. The AES/EBU digital audio signal is then ‘transcoded’ in Dante, to preserve the digital chain and processed at 192kHz – the HOLOPHONIX processor is set up to work with this sampling frequency, within a 64 I/O limit.
explains Michel Deluc, Amadeus’ R&D Manager.
The two other sources for HOLOPHONIX are monophonic, they synthesize the audio signal coming from Shure ULXD4D digital wireless microphone receivers. They can easily be moved in real time, to follow the actual position of the persons using the microphones.
The HOLOPHONIX processor creates an extremely advanced platform which is able to mix, reverberate, and spatialize sound contents played from various devices using several different spatialization techniques in two or three dimensions.
The hardware offers a quasi-unlimited number of spatialization buses, each one able to run one of the different sound algorithms available, including: Higher-Order Ambisonics (2D, 3D), Vector-Base Intensity Panning (2D, 3D), Vector-Base Amplitude Panning (2D, 3D), Wave Field Synthesis, Angular 2D, k-Nearest Neighbor, Stereo Panning, Stereo AB, Stereo XY, and Binaural.
List of Amadeus products installed in the 'Laiterie' gallery space:
Amadeus PMX 15 : 2 units
Amadeus UDF 215 : 2 units
Amadeus PMX 5 MK4 : 32 units
Amadeus ABB 12 : 8 units
List of Powersoft items installed in the 'Laiterie' gallery space:
Powersoft Ottocanali 4K4 DSP+DANTE : 4 units
Powersoft Ottocanali 8K4 DSP+DANTE : 4 units
