Pass shows the creative possibilities of Soundscape on the Paris metro

Con d&b Soundscape, Pase Platform has developed a creative experience that travelers can listen to with headphones when passing through the Opera metro station in Paris.

In collaboration with the Paris Opera and the Parisian public transport company RATP, Pase Platform, a cultural organization based in Venice that unites art and technology, has created a sound representation of the city's famous lyric theater. Con d&b Soundscape has developed recordings in his studio with layers and spatial arrangements that have resulted in 'The Secrets of the Opera’, an experience that travelers can listen to with headphones when passing through the Opera metro station.

The Pase team takes advantage of the synergies of collaboration with artists, designers, technicians and researchers to reveal and develop experiences from new creative languages ​​and technologies.

Among those experiences is d&b Soundscape, which is a fundamental element in your work study. To Victor Nebbiolo from Castri y Valeria Zane, co-founders and directors of Pase, Being at the forefront of creative production is a social and artistic obligation.

“Recent developments in immersive listening and spatial sound diffusion confirm that we must take these advances into account.”. We want to support new projects that explore space and sound in an innovative way, for both creators and audiences. “We provide the technology that will take us into a new digital golden age.”, comments Zane.

This immersive listening project is the audio project that can be heard with headphones in the Opera subway.

“I went to Paris to record sounds of the opera behind the scenes”, explain Nebbiolo di Castri. “The idea was to create atmospheric recordings that would give people traveling on public transportation an unexpected perspective on what opera is all about.”. Naturally, People tend to associate this especially with music., but there is much more like, For example, the creation of the actors' costumes, the construction of the sets or, even, the maintenance of that beautiful building. All these activities create sounds. And that's what we wanted to capture.".

Nebbiolo di Castri returned to Italy with many sound fragments recorded from all corners of the opera and, ya Platform Past, He started working to display them in the room. Recordings were played back and re-recorded using a centrally located microphone, to create depth and movement for this fascinating journey with headphones.

“We created a double layer for recording. We use the Soundscape main ring and, next, we placed six speakers very close together around the recording microphone to create depth. Engrave 'on the ring’ It's almost like taking pictures for, after, “layering one image on top of another to achieve the final result”, comments Victor Nebbiolo di Castri.

In addition to using Soundscape for the layout of pre-recorded material, Pase also recorded instruments and vocals live in the studio, and relied on the spatial positioning of the system to recreate the desired dimension in the final sound result.

The experience'The Secrets of the Opera' will remain available at the Paris Opera metro station for the next ten years, and its end is scheduled for the year 2030. Travelers can enter Pass recordings through their own headphones using a QR code.