Pollstar (01/22/20) Gottfried, Gideon

Polygon Live and L-Acoustics expect to revolutionize live sound by enhancing cinema-quality surround sound with a vertical dimension and delivering it onto dance floors. L-Acoustics President Christian Heil is readying his company's patented line source speaker array (L-ISA) Immersive Sound solution, which Polygon Live is using in parallel with its own to create an immersive 360 soundstage. This sets up 12 equidistant speaker arrays positioned on a 12-sided Polygon and a battery of speaker points directly overhead, enabling three-dimensional sound transmission. Sonic objects can be positioned anywhere within the soundscape as every speaker position is individually addressable. With Polygon developing its own software alongside L-ISA, disc jockeys and producers can repurpose existing music into spacialized content that can be programmed to move through space in various ways. "There is no sweet spot," said Polygon Director Hugo Heathcote. "The entire stage is a sweet spot." Heil said he is especially enthused about the technology's application for electronic dance music, "because the genre does not tie the physical localization of sound to a known and recognizable instrument such as a violin or a drum kit."

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