The newest iteration of the Sonic Sphere, an ever-evolving concert hall that’s the brainchild of Ed Cooke, a British cognitive science specialist and entrepreneur, sound architect Merijn Royaards, and engineering director Nicholas Christie, is outfitted with an immersive sound system driven by LEA Professional Connect Series power amplifiers.
Since 2021, Cooke and his team have built Sonic Spheres in France, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the United States, including Burning Man. Each time, the hall has grown bigger; the sphere at The Shed in New York City is the 11th and most advanced sphere, after iterations of increasing size and technical sophistication.
The result is the first Sonic Sphere to be suspended in air, costing more than $2 million. The infrastructure includes 1,178 steel struts, 3,500 yards of cloth, and 12 structural cables supporting the sphere from the roof. The 65-foot-diameter spherical concert hall has a capacity of roughly 250 people who sit or lie in netted areas. The new architectural space offers immersive sound and light explorations of music by boundary-pushing artists.
Within the sphere, guests are surrounded by 124 loudspeakers that are designed to help move sound above, below, through, and around the body, powered by amplifiers from LEA Professional.
“We were amazed with the LEA Amplifiers,” said Merijn Royaards, creative director at Sonic Sphere. “The footprint of each amplifier was a lot smaller, they perform over and above what we were used to, and they’ve got a really helpful interface and an excellent way of tuning a system, which we were missing very much with our previous solution. And suddenly, many previously difficult or impossible things were easy for us to accomplish.”
Sonic Sphere installed 31 Connect Series 354D amplifiers to power the system. With 96 kHz-capable Dante and AES67 connectivity options, the IoT-enabled four-channel 354D is stated to provide 350 watts per channel into 2, 4, and 8 ohms, and 70 and 100 volts (both rms). The CS354Dalso includes DSP with 96 kHz linear phase FIR crossover filters, RMS and peak limiters, and 32-bit floating-point DSP with built-in sample rate converters.
“Sonic Sphere really is a laboratory for the senses, where technology and art come alive,” says Brian Pickowitz, VP of marketing at LEA Professional. “We’re very proud to have played a role in such a transcendental experience.”
