Martin Audio And TiMax Power Immersive Sound At Vache Baroque 2026 Festival

Vache Baroque's 2026 Festival transformed the historic grounds of The Vache estate in Buckinghamshire into a 'water'-themed celebration of music and drama, with the lake as a natural backdrop. A sophisticated Martin Audio system provided reinforcement across the programme, while spatial audio and live tracking were delivered by TiMax to heighten immersion throughout.

The centrepiece, created with acclaimed theatre company Out Of Chaos, was a semi-operatic take on Shakespeare's The Tempest, anchored by an atmospheric multi-channel sound world from sound designer Dan Samsa. The wider bill spanned a jazz night; a Water Music concert incorporating rare material from triple BAFTA-winning wildlife recordist Chris Watson; and SPLASH!, a relaxed Tempest-inspired performance featuring the Vache Baroque Children's Choir.

"In total we had 54 loudspeaker channels," begins Simon Honywill, Market Development Manager for Live Sound, Production & Immersive at Martin Audio. "It was a system designed to provide the audience with authentic instrument reinforcement, transparent vocal performances and immersive soundtrack playback."

Performers used period instruments linked to The Tempest's musical heritage – among them harpsichord, theorbo, recorders and gut-strung strings – interwoven with Samsa's sound design, inspired by the line "the isle is full of noises". "Dan created this 25-channel soundscape using the orchestra and vocalists - instruments doing unconventional things, strange vocal noises. It was very organic," says Honywill.

The Water Music-themed concert showcased Watson's immersive field recordings, as Honywill recounted: "One was a storm at sea, another was a seal colony, and then whales - humpbacks and blues. Quite incredible."

The reinforcement was deployed in multiple layers. A distributed vocal system of nine Martin Audio FlexPoint FP6 loudspeakers formed an arc around the tent, while the band system featured two Martin Audio Q44 columns with SXC115 subwoofers as an on-stage anchor, with the band also routed through the vocal array. "The Q44 columns were very discrete, they were set back at each end of the band and just blended in," notes Honywill.

Thirteen FlexPoint FP4 units handled front fill along the stage edge. Surround and effects were delivered via a ring of 14 FP4 and four FP6 around the perimeter, plus four FP8s flown at height. "The idea was to create a homogenous 'cloud' of FX and reverb, within which there would be movement driven by TiMax and Grapes 3D," he describes. Low-frequency energy came from SXC118 and SHX218 subwoofers placed beneath seating – deployed to visceral effect during the whale sequences. "The blue whale is the subbiest thing you've ever heard in your life!" smiles Honywill.

"The [FlexPoint] speakers sound open and transparent, and the transient response is fantastic." — Simon Honywill, Martin Audio

"There's a consistent sonic footprint across the whole family, from the FP4 right the way up," he continues. "The speakers sound open and transparent, and the transient response is fantastic. Operatic voices and horns don't often go together, but Martin Audio just deals with it."

The spatial dimension relied on TiMax, which combined pre-programmed ambience with live positional tracking of actors, singers and musicians using 18 TiMax D4 trackers. In pre-production at TiMax's Tileyard (London) studio, Samsa and TiMax application specialist Gerry Marrone spatialised content and set object movements with Grapes 3D alongside TiMax2. Honywill confirms that "the entire performance was then glued together by live-tracking the actors and singers, along with the violinists, viola player, and two flute/recorder players".

In show, the Grapes 3D project nested within the playback session, passing positional data from the DAW to TiMax over OSC, ensuring synchronised playback and spatialisation as the pre-programmed objects merged into the active TiMax cue stack. "TiMax enabled us to reinforce the performances effectively while making the sound system itself effectively disappear in the minds of the audience," he says. "The tracking allows the connection between eyes and ears to be coherent. As a result, the often techno-resistant audience experienced a degree of depth, clear diction, and spatial imaging not possible with standard system deployments or other spatial processors."

To counter the tent's acoustically dry interior, upward-firing speakers contributed to a subtle reverberant field. "I used a Quantec 7.1 room simulator plug-in to provide a sense of space - really subtle, but if you take it away it's so dry without it." The reverb was routed from TiMax and returned to TiMax to preserve spatial cues.

Amplification was via Martin Audio's iKON series – a mix of iK81 and iK41 – with the design and modelling undertaken in Martin Audio's DISPLAY 3 software.

Vache Baroque, an award-winning UK charity, prioritises opportunities for young and disadvantaged people to work with leading professionals, and the audio team welcomed emerging talent Ryan McCluskey and Charlie Dudderidge. "Both of them were great," he says.

Reflecting on the project, Honywill concluded: "With Martin Audio, subtlety and musicality were the order of the day. But then, when you have to reproduce the sound of a blue whale, there is a massive amount of power! Paired with TiMax's spatial tracking, the system enabled us to provide the audience with a coherent and transparent experience entirely fitting for the event."

martin-audio.com