WFS training(s)

You are a venue concerned with keeping your technicians up to date with the latest know-how in sound reinforcement?
You work as a sound designer for a theatre or dance company and you would like to have develop your writing of soundscapes on stage?
You are a training centre and you would like to give your trainees tools they can go home with, tools they can keep using after the course is finished?
Get in touch with us for any training in WFS!

One of the main advantages of a free and open-source tool that only requires a regular computer to run is that you will be able to practice as much as you like.
Whereas a commercial system costs between 15,000 and 30,000 €/£/US$ (or more), it limits its use to a few places that are rich enough to afford such a black box on top of the rest of the whole system or on projects for short periods of time. Of course for the price you would expect some training and support from the seller. People who wish to train themselves on such systems will only have some hands-on time during the training course or just before a show for which it’s rented. Given this short time for practice it’s rare that the number of parameters allows a lot of fine adjustments. This is not a problem for large stages for which such systems have been designed where there is little concern for the mix of acoustic and amplified sound.
Our system has been designed from the ground up for the larger part of venues and companies that do not have the budget for a processor that costs as much as the number of speakers necessary for such a technique. Free as in libre and free beer. It was also thought for smaller stages that are confronted with the mix of acoustic and amplified sound. this demands a little more attention. Indirectly a free tool can have more parameters because you have time to learn and practice with all the functionalities of the processor.
So it is up to you to invest some time or call us up to train you, assist you on the spatialisation of your sound design or teach your trainees.

There are many applications for WFS. So a modular approach to the training is necessary.
A training session will necessarily start with the theory underlying this technique and its setup: principles of binaural perception, the limits of so-called « stereo » (panned) PA’s, the theory behind wave field synthesis (strictly speaking and adapted to sound reinforcement), speaker directivity…
From this point we can follow different practical scenarios depending on the available equipment and the configuration of the venue. A session geared toward regular technicians in a venue will deal essentially with the adpatation of their system to different contents (amplified music, acoustic voice and musical instruments). For a course aimed at sound designers and touring sound managers for theatre and dance companies we will discuss how to adapt the system to different venue architectures.
Then some hands-on time to rig the system and most importantly to tune it to have an homogenous coverage of the audience and to have matching positions between the visual cues on stage and the perceived positions in the spatialisation of the sounds. To push things a little further we can try to improve things with some active acoustics in the WFS system.

We can offer specific courses aimed at sound reinforcement of concerts in WFS or theatre voice amplification, sound design of Foley sounds and soundscapes, electronic music with the use of QLab (OSC macros) or Ableton Live (Max4Live). Many modules are possible depending on your necessities and the imparted time.

The training courses can be organised with the local sound equipment if suitable or with our gear that has been specially selected for WFS. Anything is possible! Get in Touch!