AURA Zürich

Set among the Paradeplatz business district in downtown Zurich is a unique, breath-taking event space, offering versatility beyond imagination. Aura is a dynamic venue, which boasts a fine dining restaurant serving sumptuous European cuisine, a bar and smoker’s lounge featuring chic and stylish interiors and a multi-functional event hall stretching across 450 sq metres, which benefits from nine metre high ceilings and exceptional technical facilities that encompass 360º projections and 3D sound.

Aura was realised by Zurich gastronome, Philippe Haussener of Aura Group, after he won a competition to convert an existing building in the famous Paradeplatz square with his design for a modern multi-purpose event venue using cutting edge technology. Philippe had a clear vision from the beginning, a 360º projection system would be the central focus, while the audio, lighting and video content would work in harmony. Live compositing and real time rendering of the projected video content was also a necessity, and start-up, shut-down and settings of the system, the architectural lighting and basic settings all needed to be controllable by several touch panels.” Knowing it was the stand out feature at Aura, Marcel Widmer from PISO AG and Philippe considered the visual dimensions of the space first and decided to install six metre high projection screens around the perimeter of the room, covering 80-metres in length.

In order to bring the projection screens to life, Stefano Trevisan, CEO of PLUSMUSIC AG, installed a Coolux system to manage, compile, control and display three-chip DLP projectors using 8 Barco RLM-W12. The lighting system from Aura includes accessories from DTS, Briteq and SGM, which is controlled by a Jands Vista T2 lighting console.

Once the eyes were satisfied, it was time to turn the attention to the ears. The aim was to create a 3D sound environment using a Sonic Emotions Sonic Wave I Madi HD 24/64 processor, which allows all the loudspeakers to benefit from the unit’s algorithms based on wave field synthesis. Preprogrammed presets allow the use of either all loudspeaker systems together, or any combination of them dependent on the application: live performance, live with 3D surround sound, club or 7.1 surround sound.

The Sonic Wave I controls all the loudspeakers in a room to reproduce sound sources that are virtually outside the room. If these sound sources are placed far away, the characteristics of plane waves can be reproduced. With plane waves, the angle at which someone perceives a sound source remains the same everywhere, enlarging the sweet spot to the entire room and enabling a spatial sound experience for all listeners. Reproduced sound sources can be moved around allowing the production of creative sound designs. In Aura all of the system’s capabilities to reproduce either plane waves or point sources and moving sources are used.”

At Aura, Marcel Widmer and Stefano Trevisan specified 54 KV2 ESD 10 compact, full-range loudspeakers, mounted on dampers behind the screen where acoustic treatments have been applied to reduce reverb time. While a total of 16 KV2 ESD 1.12 12-inch passive subwoofers have been placed along the length of the sidewalls. “The KV2 ESD 10’s have a smooth and even roll-off in the horizontal plane which complements the sonic emotion processing.”

Installer: Piso AG, Glattbrugg

Audio components:

PLUSMUSIC AG - KV2 Audio, Outline, RAM Audio, Sonic Emotion 3D, Lake

Lighting / video components:

PLUSMUSIC AG - Coolux, Barco, e:cue, SGM, DTS, Briteq, Jands

VISUAL

4 x coolux Pandoras Box Dual Server Pro multi-purpose media server
1 x coolux Pandoras Box Manager software package
1 x coolux Widget Designer Ultimate interactive application builder
8 x Barco RLM-W12 three-chip DLP projector

LIGHTING

2 x e:cue Lighting Control Engine 2 high performance server
2 x e:cue Butler XT2 DMX/RDM engine
1 x e:cue Glass Touch T6 software package
26 x DTS Nick NRG 1201 Wash moving head, 4 x DTS Jack compact moving head
16 x Briteq BT-Beam 60 LED moving head
4 x SGM X-5 strobe
1 x Jands Vista T2 lighting console

SOUND

54 x KV2 Audio ESD 10 compact loudspeaker; 16 x KV2 Audio ESD 1.12 passive subwoofer
Outline Doppia 9075 and loudspeaker and Outline DBS 18-2 subwoofer
Several RAM Audio amplifiers
1 x Sonic Emotions Sonic Wave I Madi HD 24/64 processor
4 x Lake LM26 loudspeaker processor
1 x Yamaha DME 24 digital mixing engine
2 x Pioneer CDJ-2000nexus CD player, 1 x Pioneer DJM-900nexus DJ mixer, 2 x Technics SL-1210 Mk5 turntable, 1 x Roland MX-200i digital mixer, 1 x Allen & Heath ZED-12FX console
DJ monitoring: 2 x KV2 EX 10 DJ monitor; 2 x KV2 Audio EX 12 and 2 x KV2 Audio EX 2.5 live monitors