DPA Microphones played a crucial role in groundbreaking immersive audio live events during the worldwide anniversary tour celebrating AIR’s iconic debut album, Moon Safari. The French musical duo set out to deliver a live experience that felt as rich, precise and atmospheric as the record itself.
Monitor Engineers Julien Vouillon and Florentin Convert had two goals: to recreate a sound as close as possible to the album and provide a fully immersive listening experience. To achieve this, the pair relied heavily on the clarity, precision and natural imaging of DPA Microphones. The result was a mix of solid technical innovation and audio quality that AIR’s music deserves.
With a career rooted in high-precision, album-quality live sound, Vouillon saw AIR’s return as the ideal moment to fully integrate immersive monitoring. Since the rise of in-ears, a concert has to sound like the record, both at front of house and in the monitors, he explains. AIR’s music demands that level of detail and space. The system is centered around binaural processing via spatial audio processing software, SPAT, feeding the musicians a spatially accurate, responsive room inside their in-ears. But the immersive mix only worked with captured ambience that was stunningly clean and true. That is where DPA came in.
To build the foundation of the immersive environment, Vouillon and Convert turned to the DPA 5100 Mobile Surround Microphone. Our goal was to get the musicians to listen to their own album, live, says Vouillon. The first time Iheard what the DPA 5100 delivered, it was incredible. The respect for timbre is such that it offers total transparency. To my ears, it has no intrinsic flaw: it reproduces exactly what it captures, exactly as it is, exactly where you are.
For more information, visit dpamicrophones.com.
