Phish at The Sphere
April 20, 2024 3:15 AM Subscribe
How Phish turned Las Vegas’ Sphere into the ultimate music visualizer "Some moments last night felt like you were seeing enormous versions of the old visualizers from Winamp or iTunes. Others brought the crowd into intricate, dazzling scenes."
Haters love to say that Phish's music isn't good. Fine, my favorite band sucks, whatever. But they really are incredible technical performers and improvisers. On top of that, they're regularly raising the bar for their live experiences. They did a 13-show run at Madison Square Garden and didn't repeat songs. They had a one-night-only puppet rock opera for New Year's Eve 2023. They're performers who absolutely love what they do and who they do it for.
posted by knile at 5:08 AM on April 20 [16 favorites]
posted by knile at 5:08 AM on April 20 [16 favorites]
I give them credit for not writing any songs about sex. Apart from that, I’m just happy for the fans.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:14 AM on April 20 [2 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 5:14 AM on April 20 [2 favorites]
Haters love to say that Phish's music isn't good.
Not me. I used to love going to Phish shows. I taped 12/9/1995 at The Knick.
Then... in August of '03, Mike Gordon got caught taking a 9 year old girl to a secluded area backstage at Jones Beach to take "Art Photos".
All sorts of stuff happened, including a private out-of-court settlement, but from that moment, when the rest of the band didn't cut him loose, I just couldn't stomach the thought of going to their shows any more.
Pretty lights, tho. Kudos to the LD.
posted by mikelieman at 5:38 AM on April 20 [11 favorites]
Not me. I used to love going to Phish shows. I taped 12/9/1995 at The Knick.
Then... in August of '03, Mike Gordon got caught taking a 9 year old girl to a secluded area backstage at Jones Beach to take "Art Photos".
All sorts of stuff happened, including a private out-of-court settlement, but from that moment, when the rest of the band didn't cut him loose, I just couldn't stomach the thought of going to their shows any more.
Pretty lights, tho. Kudos to the LD.
posted by mikelieman at 5:38 AM on April 20 [11 favorites]
A friend of mine will be at tonight’s show, which is to say on 4/20, which is also his birthday. Gonna be a heck of an evening, I suspect!
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:51 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:51 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
This story and reports on other gobsmacking Sphere events have caused me to squeeze the damn place onto my bucket list.
Darren Aronofsky on his Sphere Film 'Post Card From Earth'
posted by fairmettle at 6:46 AM on April 20
Darren Aronofsky on his Sphere Film 'Post Card From Earth'
[The macro cinematography shows the insect] ...a hundred feet tall.... I think if you were to look at a praying mantis, normally you’d be looking at it through a magnifying glass to see that level of detail. To not have the magnifying glass there and to see it with such clarity in 18K… No one’s really seen 18K images on this scale before, and that level of detail is a very interesting experience that’s different than anything that’s been out there before.(Alternatively: Seth Meyers interview with Darren Aronofsky on the same topic.)
posted by fairmettle at 6:46 AM on April 20
I would have loved to see the old Las Vegas, like in the 1940's... Now, not so much.
posted by Czjewel at 6:53 AM on April 20 [4 favorites]
posted by Czjewel at 6:53 AM on April 20 [4 favorites]
Saw Phish back around 1991-2 at a creaky old vaudeville-era theater/ballroom in Chicago. Every one stood on their seats the entire show, bopping and dancing, and it was a miasma of cigarette & weed smoke. My seat was partially broken, so it slanted down and I kept thinking I was gonna fall. This seems a lot nicer.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:15 AM on April 20
posted by SoberHighland at 7:15 AM on April 20
Haters love to say that Phish's music isn't good
Lol, those haters are totally ridiculous. You can dislike the music, never listen to it all and still appreciate the fact that there’s talent there.
I’ve been to Vegas and I very much understand the reason why people flock to it but it’s not for me and I really have no desire to go back. That said, the Sphere is a remarkable place that I think is unparalleled in scope and I would definitely go back to Vegas just to see a show at there.
Czjewel, what is it about the old Vegas that you find attractive?
posted by ashbury at 7:30 AM on April 20
Lol, those haters are totally ridiculous. You can dislike the music, never listen to it all and still appreciate the fact that there’s talent there.
I’ve been to Vegas and I very much understand the reason why people flock to it but it’s not for me and I really have no desire to go back. That said, the Sphere is a remarkable place that I think is unparalleled in scope and I would definitely go back to Vegas just to see a show at there.
Czjewel, what is it about the old Vegas that you find attractive?
posted by ashbury at 7:30 AM on April 20
It's not even a sphere, though.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:47 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:47 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
> It's a city that is raping itself for money, and it's pretty gross and disgusting.
okay but let's bracket off the question of whether this metaphor is entirely appropriate — bracket it off! do it! bracket that question! — and consider the possibility that what las vegas is doing to itself is actually a ravishment fantasy? like basically "what if consensual noncon but it's urban planning and design" has always been its vibe, right?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:52 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
okay but let's bracket off the question of whether this metaphor is entirely appropriate — bracket it off! do it! bracket that question! — and consider the possibility that what las vegas is doing to itself is actually a ravishment fantasy? like basically "what if consensual noncon but it's urban planning and design" has always been its vibe, right?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:52 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
Ashbury...I love slightly tawdry and tacky places. A bit down at the heels. I would have loved seeing Las Vegas in the 50s too with the rat pack, and the smoky gambling dens. It's too shiny now. And too big, and too family friendly.
posted by Czjewel at 8:25 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
posted by Czjewel at 8:25 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
You can dislike the music, never listen to it all and still appreciate the fact that there’s talent there.
There's definitely talent, no question. But otherwise their music doesn't really reach me. I will play it as background while I'm engaged in something but I'll never really listen in an active way like I do with other bands.
posted by tommasz at 8:34 AM on April 20
There's definitely talent, no question. But otherwise their music doesn't really reach me. I will play it as background while I'm engaged in something but I'll never really listen in an active way like I do with other bands.
posted by tommasz at 8:34 AM on April 20
Phish is, well, Phish. And jam bands are jammy. But we're really talking about and dancing around psychedelia.
Until the Sphere lets in the proverbial or non proverbial nitrous mafia, dancing bears and self-transforming machine elves and plays something like this in 16k video maybe with (ugh) some Shpongle or a really good electronic/experimental artist or symposium of artists it's never going to live up to it's full potential in my eyes and it's just an oversized Imax with extra steps.
The visualizations (and music) in the Phish video are very tame. Same with the U2 residency and what they did with it.
I love the idea of The Sphere but man, what they've chosen to do with it so far is barely a step above a Pink Floyd laserium show.
You could melt people's faces right off with The Sphere but it's going to take more than an overpriced cocktail, a rock band and some relatively tame visuals that are just physically large and high def.
posted by loquacious at 8:42 AM on April 20 [10 favorites]
Until the Sphere lets in the proverbial or non proverbial nitrous mafia, dancing bears and self-transforming machine elves and plays something like this in 16k video maybe with (ugh) some Shpongle or a really good electronic/experimental artist or symposium of artists it's never going to live up to it's full potential in my eyes and it's just an oversized Imax with extra steps.
The visualizations (and music) in the Phish video are very tame. Same with the U2 residency and what they did with it.
I love the idea of The Sphere but man, what they've chosen to do with it so far is barely a step above a Pink Floyd laserium show.
You could melt people's faces right off with The Sphere but it's going to take more than an overpriced cocktail, a rock band and some relatively tame visuals that are just physically large and high def.
posted by loquacious at 8:42 AM on April 20 [10 favorites]
I give them credit for not writing any songs about sex
I guess I've interpreted Bouncing Around the Room wrong all these years.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:50 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
I guess I've interpreted Bouncing Around the Room wrong all these years.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:50 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
Damn! That visual display was mind melting. Phish is probably a good band to utilize it well. I'd like to see some other psychedelically oriented acts turn that place into a living Star Gate sequence of visionary experience. As a visual artist/designer this is a dream.
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:59 AM on April 20 [2 favorites]
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:59 AM on April 20 [2 favorites]
i bet you could get a really intense beige going in there. like a beige that's so neutral it seems like somehow it's also not. a beige that has layers, levels, depth, except that instead of depth, it's utterly flat and featureless, so completely lacking in binocular cues that your eyes follow their own independent rotations, perception becomes completely divorced from the usual feedback loops, and in its desperation to re-establish control over its own input, your brain shuts down all sensory pathways and boosts the signal of randomly spiking neurons until the whole information processing infrastructure is repurposed to parse its own entropy
posted by logicpunk at 9:25 AM on April 20 [12 favorites]
posted by logicpunk at 9:25 AM on April 20 [12 favorites]
i guess i'm saying i want a big sensory deprivation chamber
posted by logicpunk at 9:35 AM on April 20 [9 favorites]
posted by logicpunk at 9:35 AM on April 20 [9 favorites]
METAFILTER: i guess i'm saying i want a big sensory deprivation chamber
posted by philip-random at 10:14 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 10:14 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
Imagine you're peaking and suddenly Phish drops this on you.
posted by vverse23 at 10:16 AM on April 20 [6 favorites]
posted by vverse23 at 10:16 AM on April 20 [6 favorites]
Unfortunately, I didn't go to Vegas when the one thing that should have gotten me there (the Star Trek Experience) was there, but I haven't completely ruled it out, and the Sphere sure sounds like it's something to see.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:21 AM on April 20 [3 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:21 AM on April 20 [3 favorites]
I loved the U2 show at the Sphere (and I'm not even a mega U2 fan). The moments when it was just the band on the screen were important to have cadence to the show; you can't have 100% mind bending, motion-sickness-inducing moments for an entire 3+ hour show IMO. And the immersiveness for the other parts was quite stunning; I stood slack jawed for probably the first 10 solid minutes. (Also you walk in and it looks like the cast concrete interior of a giant dome with an open center, complete with birds flying around landing on things, only to realize that's all projection/illusion.) To me the clips I've seen of the Phish show look boring by comparison, but I think that's probably a factor of being there, on the floor, fully immersed vs a youtube video clip. /shrug
I would be interested to see what Trent Reznor/NIN would do with it, as I always find their stage shows to be really impressive from a lighting and tech perspective.
posted by misskaz at 10:32 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
I would be interested to see what Trent Reznor/NIN would do with it, as I always find their stage shows to be really impressive from a lighting and tech perspective.
posted by misskaz at 10:32 AM on April 20 [5 favorites]
Hail bondcliff, passionate fan of Phish.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:37 AM on April 20 [2 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 10:37 AM on April 20 [2 favorites]
Looks different than when I saw them (basement of Slade Hall, UVM, 1986).
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 10:51 AM on April 20 [3 favorites]
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 10:51 AM on April 20 [3 favorites]
a beige that's so neutral it seems like somehow it's also not
James Turrell has made solo spheres you are inserted into for light immersion. At one point in a color gradient the lightfield exactly matched the color of closed eyelids. This is remarkably disembodying.
posted by away for regrooving at 10:55 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
James Turrell has made solo spheres you are inserted into for light immersion. At one point in a color gradient the lightfield exactly matched the color of closed eyelids. This is remarkably disembodying.
posted by away for regrooving at 10:55 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
Ashbury...I love slightly tawdry and tacky places. A bit down at the heels. I would have loved seeing Las Vegas in the 50s too with the rat pack, and the smoky gambling dens. It's too shiny now. And too big, and too family friendly.
There are still really tawdry tacky rundown hotel-casinos on the strip. I know because I've stayed in one. It's where the poorer Vegas tourists go. What Vegas you experience is a function of what you do in Vegas.
Don't sit on Vince Neil's motorcycle!
posted by srboisvert at 11:05 AM on April 20
There are still really tawdry tacky rundown hotel-casinos on the strip. I know because I've stayed in one. It's where the poorer Vegas tourists go. What Vegas you experience is a function of what you do in Vegas.
Don't sit on Vince Neil's motorcycle!
posted by srboisvert at 11:05 AM on April 20
I'm waiting for Phish to get stuck on a floating platform in the exact center of The Sphere.
I mean, they did it at the Square Garden, why not at The Sphere?
posted by chavenet at 11:58 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
I mean, they did it at the Square Garden, why not at The Sphere?
posted by chavenet at 11:58 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
something something going spherephishing...
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:03 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:03 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]
Ashbury...I love slightly tawdry and tacky places. A bit down at the heels.
Ah, then the little strip on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls is a must for you! It's much much smaller than Vegas but it has a similar energy along with the tawdry and tacky that you might be looking for.
Downtown Hamilton gives me a 60's/70's time capsule feel but it's not tacky or tawdry.
posted by ashbury at 12:54 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
Ah, then the little strip on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls is a must for you! It's much much smaller than Vegas but it has a similar energy along with the tawdry and tacky that you might be looking for.
Downtown Hamilton gives me a 60's/70's time capsule feel but it's not tacky or tawdry.
posted by ashbury at 12:54 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
No doubt the people who run the sphere have done some experiments with utterly mind-blowing moire patterns, but I’m willing to bet that there’s a high chance some people will get motion sickness and spew as it’s a confined space with no visible horizon problem (aka the VR helmet problem). And, while it sucks for you if your new VR helmet gives you the rum tum tum, blowing chunks onto your neighbours at U2, Phish, or whatever primo experience is next, is going to cost a lot more in dry cleaning, ticket refunds, etc.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:58 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
posted by The River Ivel at 12:58 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
Fremont street in Las Vegas was always the place you went to when you wanted to have cheap fun away from the billion dollar pleasure palaces of the strip. Dollar blackjack, cheap beers, sketchy Nathan’s stands in a smoky old casino and you’re all set. Not sure how that’s held up in the post COVID era where the casinos are nickel and diming in a way they weren’t before.
Out of all those old Fremont hotels, the Golden Nugget stood out as being the classiest of them all.
posted by dr_dank at 1:09 PM on April 20 [4 favorites]
Out of all those old Fremont hotels, the Golden Nugget stood out as being the classiest of them all.
posted by dr_dank at 1:09 PM on April 20 [4 favorites]
The River Ivel: And, while it sucks for you if your new VR helmet gives you the rum tum tum, blowing chunks onto your neighbours at U2, Phish, or whatever primo experience is next, is going to cost a lot more in dry cleaning, ticket refunds, etc.
If anybody in a Phish crowd is really wearing a dry clean-only garment to a show, I will eat my hat, shit it out, and eat it again.
posted by dr_dank at 1:12 PM on April 20 [6 favorites]
If anybody in a Phish crowd is really wearing a dry clean-only garment to a show, I will eat my hat, shit it out, and eat it again.
posted by dr_dank at 1:12 PM on April 20 [6 favorites]
What are you talking about? It has a visible horizon
My apologies, I was unaware of the exact topology of a building on a different continent to me, that I have never seen IRL. However, I have used several other 4K caves, and there’s usually some degree of motion sickness involved for me.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:39 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
My apologies, I was unaware of the exact topology of a building on a different continent to me, that I have never seen IRL. However, I have used several other 4K caves, and there’s usually some degree of motion sickness involved for me.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:39 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
ashbury...I live 36 minutes from Niagara Falls...Yes it is rather tacky. Wax museums and such. But it's a drag now crossing the bridge, with the longer lines of cars and searches , etc...In my hight school days it was fairly easy to sneak firecrackers and 222s( otc aspirin with codeine)across the bridge...And the American side of the falls is just run down period...Some dandy Italian food places though.
posted by Czjewel at 2:13 PM on April 20
posted by Czjewel at 2:13 PM on April 20
s boisvert...You are undoubtedly correct... Are they in a specific area of the strip, or perhaps back a street or two?
posted by Czjewel at 2:17 PM on April 20
posted by Czjewel at 2:17 PM on April 20
Yeah Vegas sucks, but the Sphere really is a modern marvel. It's screen is 18K! How can that not be exciting? I'm sure it does 3D; that would be a marvel to behold.
As for Phish, I like the jams just fine, but when Trey starts singing...They should just an instrumental band.
posted by zardoz at 2:30 PM on April 20
As for Phish, I like the jams just fine, but when Trey starts singing...They should just an instrumental band.
posted by zardoz at 2:30 PM on April 20
If we're talking about bands that have the audience, the draw, and the money to really work a face-melting psychedelic experience into the Sphere, I fear we're only talking about Tame Impala at this point. Unfortunately, Kevin Parker mostly seems to be doing cornball soundtrack contributions nowadays. (He has a kid to put through college eventually, I get it.)
posted by mykescipark at 3:20 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
posted by mykescipark at 3:20 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
You could melt people's faces right off with The Sphere but it's going to take more than an overpriced cocktail, a rock band and some relatively tame visuals that are just physically large and high def.
See Also: 2 hits of acid and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
posted by mikelieman at 4:22 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]
See Also: 2 hits of acid and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
posted by mikelieman at 4:22 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]
Yes there's a visible horizon, but during one of the visual effects during the U2 show, when the visuals were flowing from the top to the bottom of the screen in an endless loop, I got woozy. Motion sickness or at least vertigo is a possibility for sure, because I personally experienced it. I am short and was in the GA/floor section so "just look at the stage" actually meant looking directly at the screen, which was also surrounding my peripheral vision on all sides. I closed my eyes/stared at my feet, but looking at the stage from my vantage point did not stop the feeling that the room was tilting backwards. It felt like the effect when you're in a car or a bus and the vehicle next to you moves forward and you feel like you're moving backwards, only it kept happening. Could I have vomited? Probably not, but I was sober, and it was only for one song, and I kept looking down or closing my eyes when the effect got to be too much. It's weird to be so aggressive to someone about the possibility.
posted by misskaz at 4:25 PM on April 20 [11 favorites]
posted by misskaz at 4:25 PM on April 20 [11 favorites]
Imagine you're peaking and suddenly Phish drops this on you.
Ok, that's the best video of the Sphere I've seen so far. That's amazing.
posted by loquacious at 6:02 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]
Ok, that's the best video of the Sphere I've seen so far. That's amazing.
posted by loquacious at 6:02 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]
Motion sickness or at least vertigo is a possibility for sure, because I personally experienced it.
I don't doubt this at all. I've had some vertigo in full sized Imax theaters.
you can't have 100% mind bending, motion-sickness-inducing moments for an entire 3+ hour show IMO.
Three hours? I was thinking more like 12-16 hours, maybe more!
Some people would actually want this, especially if it came with certain party favors. Maybe even with nitrous piped conveniently to the seats.
Would it be profitable? Nah, probably not but these days you never know when there's stuff like Meow Wufl's Hypermart and the popularity of other immersive experiences.
A few years ago - long before I even heard about The Sphere - I had a really wild idea for a giant art installation that's something about the size of The Sphere if not bigger.
In this case it was a giant concrete torus shape that would be something on the order of 200-300 feet across one of the torus limb sections, and maybe 800-1000 feet across the whole interior volume of the torus.
This would hold a circular seating and a viewing platform suspended in the middle of the torus like you turned a stadium ring inside out, and also would support super high definition laser video projectors and speakers. The viewing platform could face both ways, but I was mainly thinking about arranging the seating viewing outwards.
For extra immersion and disorientation maybe the platform could slowly rotate.
The real show-stopper feature of this installation is that it's designed for massive amounts of reverb, and I would place the viewing/listening platform in the hypocenter of the reflective and highly reactive sound environment.
But the this idea gets even wilder. I want the central column of the torus to be covered in an array of speakers that rotate like a Leslie speaker. I was thinking along the lines of stacked rings of speakers that can rotate and counter rotate and project sound out into the massive torus, and speaker elements can be individually programmed and not just acting as a unified single sound system.
Though with the rapid advances in beam steering and signal processing like the speaker arrays used in The Sphere, this might not even be necessary. But this is an overkill WTF mega-scale art installation, so why not both?
And then you have guest audio and video artists use it to, well, melt people's faces right the fuck off.
It would be pretty amazing for feedback-based audio arts and experimental music, which could also be combined with generative video arts and even video feedback. Maybe hand out laser pointers or control devices to the audience to make it interactive via video feedback or other generative controls and let them paint with light. Maybe use some of the video portion as a signal source for the audio program, too, so that it's really reactive, participatory and immersive.
There's a lot of different ways it could be used but it definitely would have a focus on strange music and be geared towards using all that natural reverb for immersive sound bath kinds of things.
posted by loquacious at 6:42 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
I don't doubt this at all. I've had some vertigo in full sized Imax theaters.
you can't have 100% mind bending, motion-sickness-inducing moments for an entire 3+ hour show IMO.
Three hours? I was thinking more like 12-16 hours, maybe more!
Some people would actually want this, especially if it came with certain party favors. Maybe even with nitrous piped conveniently to the seats.
Would it be profitable? Nah, probably not but these days you never know when there's stuff like Meow Wufl's Hypermart and the popularity of other immersive experiences.
A few years ago - long before I even heard about The Sphere - I had a really wild idea for a giant art installation that's something about the size of The Sphere if not bigger.
In this case it was a giant concrete torus shape that would be something on the order of 200-300 feet across one of the torus limb sections, and maybe 800-1000 feet across the whole interior volume of the torus.
This would hold a circular seating and a viewing platform suspended in the middle of the torus like you turned a stadium ring inside out, and also would support super high definition laser video projectors and speakers. The viewing platform could face both ways, but I was mainly thinking about arranging the seating viewing outwards.
For extra immersion and disorientation maybe the platform could slowly rotate.
The real show-stopper feature of this installation is that it's designed for massive amounts of reverb, and I would place the viewing/listening platform in the hypocenter of the reflective and highly reactive sound environment.
But the this idea gets even wilder. I want the central column of the torus to be covered in an array of speakers that rotate like a Leslie speaker. I was thinking along the lines of stacked rings of speakers that can rotate and counter rotate and project sound out into the massive torus, and speaker elements can be individually programmed and not just acting as a unified single sound system.
Though with the rapid advances in beam steering and signal processing like the speaker arrays used in The Sphere, this might not even be necessary. But this is an overkill WTF mega-scale art installation, so why not both?
And then you have guest audio and video artists use it to, well, melt people's faces right the fuck off.
It would be pretty amazing for feedback-based audio arts and experimental music, which could also be combined with generative video arts and even video feedback. Maybe hand out laser pointers or control devices to the audience to make it interactive via video feedback or other generative controls and let them paint with light. Maybe use some of the video portion as a signal source for the audio program, too, so that it's really reactive, participatory and immersive.
There's a lot of different ways it could be used but it definitely would have a focus on strange music and be geared towards using all that natural reverb for immersive sound bath kinds of things.
posted by loquacious at 6:42 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]
This is the exact opposite of how sound works within the Sphere. You can't deal with reverb because the shape makes things chaotic in a way that rectangular buildings do not.
I know. My idea is something totally different and is not inspired by the Sphere at all, but wanting to intentionally make a space for reverb arts and sounds.
There's a reason why the listening platform is in the acoustic center (or slightly off axis) of a the inside of a hard torus and there's like a 150-200 foot tall spindle of rotating speakers in the center because I basically want to trap people in a giant Leslie organ speaker with overstimulating video art.
This isn't for chiling out and listening to Genesis, this is for having your bones melted by The Swans or God Speed You Black Emperor, or someone on too much Ritalyn abusing a crappy mixer and a bunch of guitar pedals.
And this is just a thought experiment and a sketch in a notebook somewhere. It's just an idea. It just happens to use some of the same ingredients.
And, yes, you can safely bet that the Sphere had to do A LOT acoustic and structural design to mitigate reverb. The massive LED screen is mostly acoustically transparent, and the inside of the "sphere" for hard surfaces and structures aren't actually spherical. It's more of a series of box volumes wrapped inside and outside with spherical LED screens.
Anyway, I did a pretty deep dive into the audio part of it before it first opened because I like pro audio and learning about it.
The Sphere doesn't use "sound canons" or anything particularly exotic for speakers, so I'm not sure where you're getting that term or idea.
They're using matrix arrays of traditional coil and cone drivers that are a sort of modified co-axial point source. By "modified co-axial" I mean they use an arrangement of slightly overlapping drivers, while traditional coaxial speakers stack drivers and center them on each other. A traditional "point source" is one speaker enclosure or cabinet that contains one or more drivers, and it's called a "point source" because you treat the whole reverberating cabinet as a single source of sound.
There have been other speaker designs like this. One of the most notable early "matrix array" soundsystems is none other than the Greatful Dead's Wall of Sound, just without all the DSP magic and phase array processing. The similarity is many drivers and cabinets acting like one speaker in an array because they become acoustically coupled by acoustic energy.
Here's a good overview article of it.
Or check out the Holoplot manufacture's site yourself. These kinds of speakers have been in use for a while for theater, amusement parks and other experiential functions. The Sphere is just the largest deployment of them.
As you can see from the article when you see quotes of 167,000 "speakers" it's actually counting individual drivers in cabinets (which isn't really how speakers are counted in the pro audio world, heh, but Vegas is gonna Vegas) and the total cabinet count is 1,600. Which is really big, yes, but not totally out of scale with large multi-stage festivals.
What's really new is the level of digital signal processing, acoustic modeling and phase-array beam steering things they can do.
And there was a lot of hype and bold claims and outright rumors about what The Sphere could actually do, including claims of being able to beam individual audio programs (say, for translations) with granularity so fine they could target individual seats.
Which I have seen no actual evidence or official claims that this is true. I seriously doubt it and it seems to be a media hype mis-interpretation and not an official claim.
I have seen some evidence of using beam steering from smaller arrays or single cabinet arrays to cover specific geographic zones in smaller areas with more spatial separation with sound for things like a museum walk through, or a slow amusement park ride - or the lobby demo you're describing.
That's a neat trick but it's also not that new.
And that's probably not the most useful thing you'd want to do with DSP-powered phased array audio anyway, not for a theater install focusing on live music or movie experiences.
The real use of this technology is to deliver high quality, high resolution sound to as many seats as possible and solve the many issues of large scale audio like delay timing, comb filtering and much more.
And this is something that non-phased array pro audio already does with linear arrays, or delay timing between point source speakers, or cardiod bass arrays to control bass heavy music and make it more directional to focus it on the audience with less spill to the stage or outside of the venue.
Sure, the Holoplot stuff is on a totally extra level with beam steering but it really is not that much different or magical than modern pro audio.
I haven't been there either, but one thing I have noted from all the videos (including the U2 residency) is that it sounds crystal clear even on a crappy smartphone video, and that holds true from whatever angle or seat they're recording from whether it's the floor or the upper mezzanines and lofts.
It's a lame metric, but I do know some things about pro audio as well as watching demos and concert footage
And even on cell phone videos on some of the U2 songs it sounded like they were practically in your lap at a small gig at a nice bar or small theater with good sound even though they look like ants on the stage. For a venue that size and for that much clarity to make it all the way to YouTube is definitely saying something.
And, well, I want to listen to Aphex Twin or Squarepusher on it.
posted by loquacious at 10:05 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]
I know. My idea is something totally different and is not inspired by the Sphere at all, but wanting to intentionally make a space for reverb arts and sounds.
There's a reason why the listening platform is in the acoustic center (or slightly off axis) of a the inside of a hard torus and there's like a 150-200 foot tall spindle of rotating speakers in the center because I basically want to trap people in a giant Leslie organ speaker with overstimulating video art.
This isn't for chiling out and listening to Genesis, this is for having your bones melted by The Swans or God Speed You Black Emperor, or someone on too much Ritalyn abusing a crappy mixer and a bunch of guitar pedals.
And this is just a thought experiment and a sketch in a notebook somewhere. It's just an idea. It just happens to use some of the same ingredients.
And, yes, you can safely bet that the Sphere had to do A LOT acoustic and structural design to mitigate reverb. The massive LED screen is mostly acoustically transparent, and the inside of the "sphere" for hard surfaces and structures aren't actually spherical. It's more of a series of box volumes wrapped inside and outside with spherical LED screens.
Anyway, I did a pretty deep dive into the audio part of it before it first opened because I like pro audio and learning about it.
The Sphere doesn't use "sound canons" or anything particularly exotic for speakers, so I'm not sure where you're getting that term or idea.
They're using matrix arrays of traditional coil and cone drivers that are a sort of modified co-axial point source. By "modified co-axial" I mean they use an arrangement of slightly overlapping drivers, while traditional coaxial speakers stack drivers and center them on each other. A traditional "point source" is one speaker enclosure or cabinet that contains one or more drivers, and it's called a "point source" because you treat the whole reverberating cabinet as a single source of sound.
There have been other speaker designs like this. One of the most notable early "matrix array" soundsystems is none other than the Greatful Dead's Wall of Sound, just without all the DSP magic and phase array processing. The similarity is many drivers and cabinets acting like one speaker in an array because they become acoustically coupled by acoustic energy.
Here's a good overview article of it.
Or check out the Holoplot manufacture's site yourself. These kinds of speakers have been in use for a while for theater, amusement parks and other experiential functions. The Sphere is just the largest deployment of them.
As you can see from the article when you see quotes of 167,000 "speakers" it's actually counting individual drivers in cabinets (which isn't really how speakers are counted in the pro audio world, heh, but Vegas is gonna Vegas) and the total cabinet count is 1,600. Which is really big, yes, but not totally out of scale with large multi-stage festivals.
What's really new is the level of digital signal processing, acoustic modeling and phase-array beam steering things they can do.
And there was a lot of hype and bold claims and outright rumors about what The Sphere could actually do, including claims of being able to beam individual audio programs (say, for translations) with granularity so fine they could target individual seats.
Which I have seen no actual evidence or official claims that this is true. I seriously doubt it and it seems to be a media hype mis-interpretation and not an official claim.
I have seen some evidence of using beam steering from smaller arrays or single cabinet arrays to cover specific geographic zones in smaller areas with more spatial separation with sound for things like a museum walk through, or a slow amusement park ride - or the lobby demo you're describing.
That's a neat trick but it's also not that new.
And that's probably not the most useful thing you'd want to do with DSP-powered phased array audio anyway, not for a theater install focusing on live music or movie experiences.
The real use of this technology is to deliver high quality, high resolution sound to as many seats as possible and solve the many issues of large scale audio like delay timing, comb filtering and much more.
And this is something that non-phased array pro audio already does with linear arrays, or delay timing between point source speakers, or cardiod bass arrays to control bass heavy music and make it more directional to focus it on the audience with less spill to the stage or outside of the venue.
Sure, the Holoplot stuff is on a totally extra level with beam steering but it really is not that much different or magical than modern pro audio.
I haven't been there either, but one thing I have noted from all the videos (including the U2 residency) is that it sounds crystal clear even on a crappy smartphone video, and that holds true from whatever angle or seat they're recording from whether it's the floor or the upper mezzanines and lofts.
It's a lame metric, but I do know some things about pro audio as well as watching demos and concert footage
And even on cell phone videos on some of the U2 songs it sounded like they were practically in your lap at a small gig at a nice bar or small theater with good sound even though they look like ants on the stage. For a venue that size and for that much clarity to make it all the way to YouTube is definitely saying something.
And, well, I want to listen to Aphex Twin or Squarepusher on it.
posted by loquacious at 10:05 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]
I'm going mostly by Burback's review of the U2 show, but it makes sense that U2 is not the band to fully use the Sphere. Not that they aren't good at spectacle, but....Phish is who you want. The Blue Man Group is How you want. Tool is who you want. The Flaming Lips. OKGO. Rammstein....well. Rammstein would probably blow the damn thing up. But U2 seemed like it was going to be a boring choice.
posted by es_de_bah at 4:51 AM on April 21
posted by es_de_bah at 4:51 AM on April 21
Yeah, but U2 fans are in the part of the diagram that tend to have a LOT of money.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:55 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 6:55 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]
I saw U2 at The Sphere three times so I'm glad to get another artist's perspective on the possibilities of the space.
I understand why U2's use of The Sphere fell flat for some. I think part of the problem was they got stuck between themes. This was billed as kind of a Zoo TV redux (which made sense for the media spectacle we were told to expect from the facility), but the problem was they built in the desert, which was at the centre of U2's other big album, and they've already mined that for retrospection. But the location meant that the band couldn't help diving into those visuals. And while they were gorgeous, it just wasn't what people were primed for. Also ZooTV doesn't belong on seamless crystal clear 16k screens. It was chaotic and dystopian. Essentially The Sphere opened six years too late for them. It would have been perfect for their Joshua Tree 30th anniversary shows.
Based on the clips I've seen of the Phish show, they chose to use the screen to focus on the infinite, whereas U2 constructed some dazzling spaces, but spaces that still had boundaries. The most dazzling visual sequence of the show involves going inside.
But honestly the thing that stood out the most to me about the venue was the sound. Having seen a lot of concerts in stadiums and arenas, the sound quality in The Sphere is a game changer. I've seen U2 in concert almost 50 times, and the sound system here had me picking out pieces of their sonic arrangement that were totally new to me. Going back to arena shows is going to take some getting used to.
posted by dry white toast at 9:50 PM on April 21 [1 favorite]
I understand why U2's use of The Sphere fell flat for some. I think part of the problem was they got stuck between themes. This was billed as kind of a Zoo TV redux (which made sense for the media spectacle we were told to expect from the facility), but the problem was they built in the desert, which was at the centre of U2's other big album, and they've already mined that for retrospection. But the location meant that the band couldn't help diving into those visuals. And while they were gorgeous, it just wasn't what people were primed for. Also ZooTV doesn't belong on seamless crystal clear 16k screens. It was chaotic and dystopian. Essentially The Sphere opened six years too late for them. It would have been perfect for their Joshua Tree 30th anniversary shows.
Based on the clips I've seen of the Phish show, they chose to use the screen to focus on the infinite, whereas U2 constructed some dazzling spaces, but spaces that still had boundaries. The most dazzling visual sequence of the show involves going inside.
But honestly the thing that stood out the most to me about the venue was the sound. Having seen a lot of concerts in stadiums and arenas, the sound quality in The Sphere is a game changer. I've seen U2 in concert almost 50 times, and the sound system here had me picking out pieces of their sonic arrangement that were totally new to me. Going back to arena shows is going to take some getting used to.
posted by dry white toast at 9:50 PM on April 21 [1 favorite]
FWIW U2 has been looking at the Holoplot's ability to steer sound in specific ways for decades.
Jesus. I didn't realize U2 was rich enough to own a time machine. What the fuck, man, someone should get them to pay their taxes or something.
posted by loquacious at 6:56 AM on April 25
Jesus. I didn't realize U2 was rich enough to own a time machine. What the fuck, man, someone should get them to pay their taxes or something.
posted by loquacious at 6:56 AM on April 25
Late to the party, but it seems like Drew Carey is a newly converted Phish fan because of the sphere. I recommend at least watching the first two minutes of the second clip.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:52 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:52 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]
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