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Musicians using AudioImmersion in studio

Fred Zindi Music
Good news for all recording musicians is coming from Eastern Europe. A good friend of mine, Ngonidzashe Michael Chinyamurindi who is based in the US has posted to me great news.

He informs me that in the near future, musicians will not need to worry about visiting recording studios and spend fortunes unnecessarily as a magic ball created by a Polish firm, Zylia, will do all the recording for them. Studio owners and producers who were thinking of updating your studio equipment, you better hold on until you read this article. Technology is moving fast. This is how it l works:

Nowadays if you want to make a decent live recording of a medium-sized band you need several microphones, stands, a computer, a digital work station, a mixer, monitors and a sound registering device. And don’t forget about metres of cables that tend to get tangled up. All of these things take up space, often have to be transported despite sometimes being quite heavy and setting them up is time-consuming. These innocent objects (with whom musicians often develop a love-hate relationship) might soon become obsolete because of a ball-shaped piece of equipment created by the Polish research and development company Zylia. Audio-Immersion is a prototype microphone device that packs all the crucial functions of the aforementioned kit into one compact object. Simply put, it is a magic ball that could potentially replace several pieces of the above mentioned essential equipment.

A single microphone device capable of high-quality recording from many sources isn’t a new idea. Symphonic orchestras, for example, need this type of recording. However, the existing devices able to perform this feat have a significant limitation that differentiates them from AudioImmersion. They don’t offer multi-track recording.

This kind of sound recording enables you to make separate recordings of each instrument (or voice) taking part in a group recording session at once. Later one can put together the separate recordings to produce a coherent musical whole. This process is called mixing. Multi-track recording, which is commonplace in popular music and often involves the use of a larger or smaller kit of the type described earlier, allows for extensive editing of the captured material.

On the other hand, recording many sound sources with a single microphone device immediately produces a basically inseparable whole, which is less editable than multi-track material. That is of course, if the device in question isn’t Audio-Immersion.

To illustrate how AudioImmersion works, let us picture a room with a drummer and guitarist simultaneously playing. The device has been placed between them and is recording. When they stop, thanks to Zylia’s prototype, they can listen to what they have played together or to the drums on their own, the guitar alone. How is this possible? The device uploads the audio data to a cloud, where it can be processed to obtain the separate tracks. The service for this processing comes with AudioImmersion and that is why the magic ball is described by its creators as a live audio recording system. Zylia assures that its prototype, which contains not one but a whole array of microphones, makes studio-quality recordings.

Those who have already used it have confirmed that the ball is as good as any high quality recording studio. So why bother with all the equipment that is needed in a recording studio when the magic ball can do it and produce the same or better sound?

AudioImmersion was designed by a group of young scientists led by Dr Tomasz ?ernicki, one of the founders of Zylia. He’s an engineer by education, but he enjoys playing music from time to time. ?ernicki is fascinated with sound and engineering and often tries to bring those two passions into his creative pursuits. According to him, the 3D audio technology developed by Zylia which is used in AudioImmersion may find applications outside of music, for instance in virtual reality systems or television.

Audio Immersion is a system capable of 360 degrees live audio recording. The system consists of a microphone array and a cloud-based audio processing service. Sound recorded by this system can be represented as a group of independent audio sources (guitar, violin, trumpet, vocal, bass, drums, keyboards, etc.) with associated information about their position in space. Audio Immersion is suitable for musicians, bands, recording studios and all music enthusiasts who like to record and process audio.

Unfortunately the company, Zylia, does not know yet when its ball-shaped prototype device will be introduced to the world market. However, AudioImmersion was officially introduced to the US at the 139th Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York City, on October 29. It is now on the market in the US and will soon make it everywhere else.

I tried to find out how much this device will cost when it becomes available to the rest of the world and I was given an estimate of $300 per unit, which is a significant saving from the ordinary recording studios we know today.

What all this new technology means is that there is a possibility that a lot of musicians will be able to afford their own recording studios and will start to invest in their own recording using the Audio Immersion technology.

They will be looking back at recording studios such as Metro Studios, Mosi-Oa-Tunya, Shed Studios, Monolio Studios, Chill Spot, Body Slam, Givenchy, Hot Property, Level Studios, JP Studio and Gunhill as things of the past.

I asked one studio owner what his thoughts were regarding this development and his reply was: “This new technology is going to kill our business. I hope it is not coming to Zimbabwe too soon. You see, I used to own a phone shop, then an internet café and these were soon overtaken by the mobile phone. Now there is a threat to my recording studio. I will have to think quickly what to do next, otherwise I am doomed since my livelihood has been dependent on my recording studio for the past four years.”

Indeed, even the employment of recording producers, studio engineers and support staff will also be doomed as the technological competition thickens.

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