Customisable acoustics, the dream of any musician

On its own, the bare, sober hall sounds a bit flat. One would never think that Centrum Muziek XXI houses the acoustic environment of the Sydney Opera House or the Amsterdamse Concertgebouw.

Built as a working place for musicians and artists, the centre facilitates an audience of 120 and offers practice facilities for over 40 professional ensembles. To create an optimal acoustic environment where artists could practice their performances, an intensive selection process was started to find a suitable acoustic solution.

Event Acoustics’ XLNT VAP (Virtual Acoustics Processing) system was selected based on earlier experiences at the auditorium of The Utrecht Archives (Het Utrechts Archief). Here VAP reverberation was used to create historical sound spaces with a natural sound quality.

VAP allows you to alter the acoustics of any hall at the push of a button.
Special loudspeakers mounted to the walls and ceiling catch the sound and transmit it with more or less reverberation. This allows ensembles to practice in a simulation of the hall where they will be performing. From medieval and classical music to world music and jazz.

XLNT VAP - The theatre sound of the future

The XLNT VAP system evolved out of the XLNT MCR acoustical system that successfully features in many concert halls and theatres around the world, such as Kursaal Oostende in Belgium.

By using a hall’s own reverberant field to create a unique natural sound, the completely digital XLNT MCR system was able to do what no analogue acoustical enhancement system had been able to do before. It could change an acoustic environment without changing the architectural structure of a building and simulate any acoustic situation.

The XLNT VAP system was developed as an affordable, standardised, solution for spaces too small for XLNT MCR. Using a specially developed algorithm, XLNT VAP’s system can amplify a sound by 40 dB so that it does not need a reverberation field. This makes XLNT VAP an excellent solution for rooms <3000m3 where the distance between the system’s speakers and microphones would normally be too small to accomplish the target amplification of the reverberant field without distorting it.

XLNT VAP not only offers a better amplification of the reverberation field in smaller rooms, it also offers the ability to clone any other room’s acoustics. It has the option to double as a highly advanced 3D surround system (VIP - Virtual Image Processing) that allows the movement of sound sources in an acoustic situation. This can create the sensation of a helicopter moving around in the Notre-Dame or in a small basement.

Custom acoustics

Creating a reverberant field in a small room is extremely difficult. One needs to achieve the necessary amplification of the reverberation field without colouration and feedback. Time variance algorithms are often used to overcome these issues but introduce another problem: the colouring of pure tones.

The NOSTRADAMUS algorithm created by Event Acoustics solves this problem. After measuring the acoustical characteristics of the original room using impulse measurement, the algorithm can distinguish the difference between the original signal, the response of the other VAP modules and the room’s response. It is then able to amplify only the original signal without affecting the reflected part of the signal. To a certain extent it can even ignore the room’s original acoustics. This poses an opportunity for creating new acoustics in the hall.

Using a technique called convolution, the original signal is multiplied with the acoustical characteristics of another hall. XLNT VAP technology, combined with a library featuring the characteristics of hundreds of halls in the world, enables musicians and engineers to play in any acoustic environment.

Diamond Modules for a diffuse and spacious sound field

For classical music it is extremely important that a system is not audibly present during the “quiet moments” of a composition. Conversely, it must be able to amplify a fortissimo without any distortion. In order to create a more diffuse reverberation from the speakers, Event Acoustics installed specially developed “XLNT VAP Diamond Modules” in Centrum Muziek XII.

Enabling the positioning of individual Diamond Modules allows for a diffuse and spacious sound field. The XLNT VAP Diamond Modules have a separate 8 inch low driver for low frequency information and use a dipole loudspeaker set up to create a diffuse and spacious sound field. Each module has a built in 2 inch high efficiency D-class amplifier, microphone and microphone amplification with very low noise levels. The unique shape of the modules creates the opportunity to create a 360° centre cluster with only 2 modules.


Who wouldn’t want to play in the acoustic setting of the Wiener Musikverein or the Notre-Dame Cathedral?

Contact us to learn how you can create the same acoustic as the Amsterdamse Concertgebouw in your auditorium, theatre or recording studio using VAP.