YAPA — L’Espace Saint Exupéry, Wissous, France

Project Description

First formed in Paris, Yapa’s three guitarists and percussionist consider travelling the world an indispensable source of inspiration for their music.

Their latest album “Archipel” was heavily influenced by recent tours in French Polynesia and Great Britain and follows Pariwaga and Wagamumbai, recorded in Burkina Faso and India respectively.

After several months of independent composition, arrangement and rehearsal work, YAPA recorded “Archipel” at le Studio de Meudon, France in January 2016.

These recording sessions reveal a strong creative group dynamic and brings a fresh, spontaneous sound to the recording, faithfully rendered by the L‑ISA BluBubbles BluSpace standard.

Sound Design Solution

Instead, Yapa deployed an L‑ISA wide design solution with Syva composing the Scene system and 2 SB18 in cardioid configuration located center stage above the musicians. All of the above hung from a single truss. In addition, four Syva Sub were positioned in the center on the ground for infrasonic reproduction.

Two Syva were used as Extensions and six Syva wrapped around the audience as part of a surround system to enhance immersion.

This implementation principle, delivered outstanding results for audience: incredible localisation (5 syva/5musicians) full immersion and better, cleaner low end in this room than ever before.

The performance was transcribed with an unprecedented level of detail, transparency, reconnecting the audience the performance on stage.

Setup

L-ISA Design L-ISA Design
L/R Design L/R Design
Technical Information
TypePerformance Hall
Venue20m wide x 25m deep
Stage8m x 8m
FOH15m
Sound Design Target
Program typeWorld Jazz
SPL max average>= 100 dBA
SPL distribution6 – 9 dB
Frequency contour6 dB (@ 100hz)
Frequency contour6 dB (@ 40hz)

Mapping

L-ISA Design L-ISA Design
L/R Design L/R Design
L/R Coverage

Strong Imaging

Weak Imaging
L-ISA Coverage

Strong Imaging

Weak Imaging

Mixing the show in a fully immersive L‑ISA set-up gave the feeling of space and being enveloped in the sound like never before. After we optimized the design in Soundvision we required very little onsite tuning and once done, the soundcheck was incredibly fast and easy, with almost no need for extensive processing of the instruments or tracks.

Being able to position sources at their true location without thinking of masking effects, comb filtering, or adding decorrelation effects, was a breeze. Each instrument sounded very natural – individually and globally.

Once the show started, I was able to adjust all the different intensities and variations with the object-based L‑ISA controller software, moving objects in distance instead of riding the desk volume faders. I used the built-in auxiliary send of the L‑ISA Controller software to feed an external effect. The cherry on the cake was using the LA Network Manager to fine tune the frequency response of a 13.1 system as easily as if it was a simple stereo system.

A lot of people came to me during and after the show to tell me how great the concert sounded and how they felt inside the music more than ever, and those people were sat everywhere in the venue, not only in front of me.

Sylvain Biguet, L‑ISA Sound Engineer