NEWS
BIGGER PICTURE
What: Polygon Live LDN Where: Crystal Palace, London When: 2-4 May 2025 Image: Ben McQuaide
Apioneer of 360-degree spatial audio, Polygon Productions brought its immersive live audio set up to an outdoor setting in London for the first time in May. The three-night run, under canvass, in Crystal Palace Park, featured acts including Jon Hopkins and Tinariwen performing in a 5,000-capacity tent.
The set up included Polygon’ s 360 sound system using L- Acoustics speakers and an L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive suite of tools to spatialise the artists’ music. The hemispherical structure was rigged with a 12.1.4 system with 12 L-Acoustics speaker arrays surrounding the audience, a festival-grade sub-wall delivering bass, and four overhead arrays providing sound from above.
The audio was coupled with a vast lattice of synchronised lighting rigged above the audience to create a wraparound audio-visual experience. With the aim of making the performances as immersive as possible, other technologies used included haptic shirts.
Overseeing the UK’ s first outdoor spatial audio festival was Polygon’ s CEO Nico Elliot.“ At Polygon Live LDN we wanted to curate three distinct days with our largest variety of artists yet,” he says.“ We wanted fans of these musicians to be able to experience them like they ' d never heard them before – in full spatial audio. Friday ' s programming therefore included a diverse and eclectic line-up, while Saturday was dedicated to some of the most avant-garde electronic musicians of our time, and Sunday to different kinds of dance music.
“ We ' ve had incredible responses from our artists, both those who have never worked with spatial audio before and those who are deeply invested in it already. The positive feedback from the latter is particularly heartening to us. Hearing spatial audio and tech innovators like Max Cooper and Halina Rice praise our system is, quite literally, music to our ears.”
The event set up included a huge dome tent to house the stage, audience and audio-visual set up, while additional infrastructure included a VIP area and food & beverage vendors. Among the event partners were Full Fat Events and OpenLab.
“ We were pleased with our ticket sales, particularly given that this was a first-of-its-kind event,” says Elliot.“ We sold out on Saturday and were close to capacity on both Friday and Sunday. The audience response has been enormously positive, with the majority of respondents to our feedback survey rating their experience 8 out of 10.”
6 accessaa. co. uk