How the Sonic Sphere—Suspended in Air—Sounds As Good As It Looks

Sonic Sphere— the glowing, immersive ball of Pro AV wonder— was created by British cognitive science expert and entrepreneur Ed Cooke, sound architect Merijn Royaards, and engineering director Nicholas Christie. Since 2021, Cooke and his team have built more than 10 Sonic Spheres in France, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the United States. Each time, the hall has grown bigger and more technically sophisticated, which holds true at The Shed in New York City where the 11th and most advanced sphere is homed.

This is the first Sonic Sphere to be suspended in air, costing more than $2 million. The infrastructure includes 1,178 steel struts, 3,500 yards of cloth, and 12 structural cables supporting the sphere from the roof. The vast, 65-foot-diameter spherical concert hall has a capacity of roughly 250 people, who sit or lie in netted areas. This new architectural space features immersive, 3D sound and light explorations of music by boundary pushing artists.

Within the sphere, guests are surrounded by 124 meticulously arranged loudspeakers that move sound above, below, through, and around the body. Sound and light waves are sculpted into spatialized, temporal architectures. Together, they create hyperreal and deeply multisensory, shared experiences. To power the immersive experience, the creative team behind the Sonic Sphere turned to amplifiers from LEA Professional.

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“We were amazed with the LEA Amplifiers,” said Merijn Royaards, creative director at Sonic Sphere. “The footprint of each amplifier was a lot smaller; they perform over and above what we were used to, and they've got a really helpful interface and an excellent way of tuning a system, which we were missing very much with our previous solution. And suddenly, many previously difficult or impossible things were easy for us to accomplish.”

Sonic Sphere installed 31 Connect Series 354D amplifiers to power the immersive audio experience. With 96 kHz-capable Dante and AES67 connectivity options, the IoT-enabled four-channel 354D provides 350 watts per channel into 2, 4, and 8 ohms, and 70Vrms and 100Vrms. The CS354D includes advanced DSP with 96 kHz linear phase FIR crossover filters, acoustically transparent look ahead RMS and peak limiters, and 32-bit floating-point DSP with built-in sample rate converters. It also supports high-Z (70V or 100V) and low-Z selectable by channel and features two Smart Power Bridge channels.

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The Connect Series delivers cloud connectivity, a significant benefit for anyone maintaining the systems. With LEA Cloud, AV teams can remotely control and monitor the amplifiers regardless of the location or time of day. Whether from within the sphere or a different continent, controlling the Connect Series amplifiers from afar helps teams work more efficiently, reducing travel and saving time and money.

“Sonic Sphere really is a laboratory for the senses, where technology and art come alive,“ said Brian Pickowitz, VP of marketing at LEA Professional . “We’re very proud to have played a role in such a transcendental experience.”