Sonic Potential

Summer in Montreal isn't all about outdoor music festivals, but they're a big part of drawing world class talent and massive crowds from across North America and beyond to the city's Quartier des Spectacles.

This past June and July were no exception. As always, two of Montreal's flagship festivals, Les Francos de Montréal, which celebrates French-language artists, and the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, took over a good chunk of downtown.

Site-wide, this year and in previous years, the festivals' partner, Montreal-based production company L'Équipe Spectra, has leaned heavily on L-Acoustics PAs and Allen & Heath dLive and Avantis consoles. However, during both Francos and Jazz Fest 2026, one stage was chosen for an experiment aimed at reducing sound from spilling over and impacting nearby residents and businesses, while enhancing the listening experience for audiences.

The stage in question (named the 'Desjardins Stage' during Les Francos and the 'Loto-Québec Club Montréal Stage' during Jazz Fest) is a popular free-admission outdoor venue with a capacity of thousands located near the main stage. This year, it was equipped with a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision (WPS) system optimized using the TiMax spatial audio processing platform.

"I've been working on Jazz Fest and Francos since 2015, and we've been working with Erikson Pro for years," says Dan Meier, Senior Technical Coordinator for both events, adding that the company also represents Allen & Heath in Canada, and that they approached him to showcase their newest Martin Audio system this year.

The Desjardins Stage in downtown Montreal.

“I used to be a sound engineer,” he says, “and I mixed some shows in Europe on Martin Audio systems, but that was about 15 years ago.” When the idea was floated, however, the system's potential for dialing back the impact of sonic collateral damage nearby was intriguing.

Before digging into the system and the use of TiMax, I'll present some context.

As a former Montreal resident, I'm intimately acquainted with the release and relief that comes with heading outside to enjoy any of the city's summer offerings. During the summer months, closing backstreets, main arteries and entire sections of the city to throw a party seems more common in Montreal than elsewhere (in my experience).

Living in Montreal is a trade-off between lengthy, brutal winters (-20°C/-4°F or below is common) and the joys of a lifestyle defined by a degree of esprit indomptable that's uniquely invigorating. Few Montrealers would disagree. Nor would they want highly accessible festivals that bring scads of business to town inconvenienced by excessive regulation or limitations.

That said, as Meier notes, nearby residents still need to live, work, sleep and hear themselves think, and the city is very serious about ensuring they can. Since living in Montreal, I often evaluate other cities' 'liveability' by how accepting residents, businesses and bureaucrats are of officially sanctioned street parties. However, as in other major cultural hubs, everyone wants to live in the heart of the action as long as the spill from that action stops dead at their doorway.

In recent years in Montreal, the battle over sound levels has played out in several skirmishes between small venues and their neighbors, with varying results and casualties on both sides. But it's not limited to 'house to venue' fighting.

“One of the big concerns we always have is noise management,” Meier continues. “The city rules are very strict, and we need to keep good relationships with our neighbors. They are quite close. We're downtown. There are more and more condos around the Place des Festivals.

“We've been very proactive about keeping the energy in the audience area and as little spillage (beyond that) as possible. You know, we try to keep everybody happy, which is not always easy.” Meaning, essentially, that achieving good coverage, clarity and punch at medium to low levels is crucial. “The Martin Audio PA delivered very well,” Meier adds, “maximizing the audience's experience within the noise control constraints.”

“That was one of the key reasons the festivals' production team were keen on the WPS system,” says Claus Frostell, the system's designer and product manager at Erikson Pro. “The optimization WPS provides, particularly with Martin Audio subwoofers, allowed us to localise the sound very specifically to the audience area.”

In all, the system comprised eight Martin Audio WPS line array elements per side, four TORUS T820 constant curvature arrays for front fills, two TORUS T1230 as delays, three SX218 dual 18” subs and six SX118 single 18” subs powered by Martin’s iKON amps.

“We had the three dual 18” subs positioned across the front of the stage in a cardioid configuration and three single 18” cardioid subs on each side to reduce SPL to the rear of the stage by roughly 30 dB, while narrowing the coverage so it was focused primarily on the audience area,” Frostell notes, adding that the system was modeled and optimized via Martin Audio’s DISPLAY 3 software, leveraging the platform’s Hard Avoid feature to concentrate coverage. Ultimately, “maintaining consistent frequency response and level from the front of the audience area right through to the back.”

“The cardioid subs were very important,” Frostell adds. In part because the stage was in a new location, potentially exposing more residents and businesses to spill. “Previously, the stage was slightly secluded on the Place des Arts mezzanine. With all the buildings there, it wasn’t as critical for the distribution of the sound and for the SPL. This year it had to be really localized.”

Yet still present and powerful, he adds, citing a late 90s iteration of the British Summertime Festival in London’s Hyde Park. “With a lot of very expensive real estate around it, the SPL had to be really controlled.”

In that case perhaps too much so: “There was a famous incident with Blur. I think they had a cap at 97 dBA and it turned into a near riot.” Frostell adds that a similar solution incorporating WaveFront Precision line arrays (predominantly WPL and MLA arrays) and TiMax was deployed recently for BST.

“My impression of the system,” says Hugues Bourque, FOH engineer working the stage for both festivals: “very musical, very precise in terms of low-end cancellation on stage and in the back, which the bands liked. And the tone of the main PA was really good. The vocals and subs sounded amazing.”

It also held up to what can be a very demanding and unpredictable environment, he adds: “We had lots of rain followed by scorching heat, but I never felt it affected the PA. It performed very well for the duration of the two festivals.”

As for TiMax, Meier says: “It’s a really interesting platform that gives you the power to position audio objects in 3D, a little bit like Atmos. But I was curious – I asked Claus, ‘Why do you want to use that on a stereo PA?’” I’m curious, too – for a larger system, an intentionally created immersive audio environment, sure. For a standard left/right festival rig, it seems a bit like bringing a howitzer to a pillow fight.

“It is,” Erikson Product Specialist Patrick Meldrum (who programmed the TiMax rig for the festival) admits, adding that this application barely scraped the surface of TiMax’s capabilities. “But, like an auxiliary control on a mixer, TiMax can do all kinds of things.

“The way the software works, you can create a room where the room is static, and then you can have objects – say, a guitar as an object – as a separate track that moves. If you’re doing playback live or for, say, a film or something like that, you can alter that mix, and then also you have a tracking system, which you can put on a performer. As they move, it moves either in the space as you see it, or as someone else controls.”

For those who may be unfamiliar, TiMax is an object-based, dynamic delay-matrix spatial audio processing technology that delivers precise 3D localization, panning, acoustic enhancement, automation and more via its 2U SoundHub unit and PanSpace 3D spatial audio rendering, panLab 3D panning and OSC integration software, and TrackerD4 wireless performer tracking system.

“This is the first use of spatial audio at the festivals, but the organisers were happy to explore it,” Frostell explains. “Their main concern was that, because they host a lot of guest engineers, they didn’t want excessive spatial movement or localization that could detract from the engineers’ mixes.

“Traditionally, a left/right loudspeaker configuration creates a relatively small stereo sweet spot in the center of the audience,” he continues. “Using TiMax with the WPS system and TORUS front fills, we’re able to expand that stereo image significantly, allowing more of the audience to experience the mix as it was intended.

“The engineer doesn’t need to do anything differently – they mix as normal, and we simply extend what they are already doing. Once we explained that we’re simply enhancing the stereo image across the audience area, they became very excited about the possibilities.”

Meier adds: “Claus told me that they would use the front fills and mains in conjunction to widen the stereo image throughout the audience area (including those covered by the delays) and pull the sound down. Meaning, essentially, that listeners perceive the sound as coming at them directly rather than from above.”

In this particular case, you can argue that what they were trying to do, as Meldrum puts it: “It’s like using your Ferrari to get groceries, right? This was a stationary setup. But when we ended up putting the delay fills, because there were two sets of delays on there, the audience’s experience was wider and cleaner than it would be with a regular delay. That was our purpose for this specific event.”

Meldrum: “In the back of the TiMax SoundHub you have AES and/or analog outs for what you choose. So we ended up doing a mix that was left/right (that was one AES from the console). Then we had two more sends, and all we had to do was raise the fader, and you got the delays in. So we had a front fill mix, a delay mix that was on TiMax and of course the main system.”

As for the other, more extensive applications, Meldrum says that in order to detail the full extent of the possibilities, he'd need to dig deeper into the "heavy-duty horsepower" under TiMax's hood. "I haven't studied it to that extent, but you can (use it) to put dozens and dozens and dozens of points around a room where you have speakers.

"So if you decided to take your singer and spin him around the room clockwise, the software does the calculations in real time so you can do that without any phase cancellation or delay issues whatsoever. Essentially, it can give audiences "a real sense that an object or a person is flying (around) in front of you."

Effects offer yet another dimension, he continues: "Imagine you have a regular left/right reverb, and then you decide to throw somebody around the room. Well, the reverb still stays in its original spot, but using TiMax, now, as you go, let's say, to the right, you hear the presence of the person – the object – more on the right with a little bit more reverb on that side as you go around."

"At the end of the day, it still has to sound good. Your mix has to have validity," he says, citing classic Beatles tracks with the band on one side and the vocals the other. "In the real world (live), that wouldn't work out. So you have to make thoughtful choices.

"Let's say you have a kick drum; we know where that's happening. It's going to stay in the same place. If you spin that around the room, will it interfere with clarity? If it confuses the situation, that's not ideal."

The point: while the platform is capable of far more than it was used for in this application, not all spatial audio applications are going to be of the 'Las Vegas Sphere-like' variety. But, as Meldrum rightly notes, there are many use cases.

"I see TiMax more as a Sphere-style production resource where you can have, let's say, a room in your town and a room in my town that are about the same size, and we watch the same production of an interactive visual and musical presentation. If you've got a fixed audience and a fixed space, you can really use these tools in a way that everybody's going to enjoy it. Then it could be super powerful."