QUESTION · AUDIO Q&A

Has anyone used or heard of DMB Soundscape immersive PA software?

ASKED BY · Jeff Francis · COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA · 16 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:00:28

THE PANEL'S ANSWER
Jeff FrancisPANELIST

DMB Soundscape is an object-based PA system software that uses objects, time, phase, and level alignment to place audio throughout a distributed PA system, designed for large spaces where most of the audience is not in the sweet spot.

Mickey

Compared DMB to similar object-based systems like EL Acoustics ELISA and Meyer Sound SpaceMap; they're comparable platforms with different interaction models, with SpaceMap offering more dynamic and creative control.

Summarised by AI from what the panel said. Watch the moment for the full answer.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

From the transcript.

Machine-transcribed, so it may contain errors. Every timestamp opens the episode at that second.

0:27and I'm going to tell you later about more ways to ask questions and get involved. But to get started, Alexander, what's the first question this morning? First question this morning is coming in from Jeff Francis in Columbia, South Carolina. Has anyone used or heard of DMB Soundscape immersive PA software? Mr. Francis, what is this thing? Well, I just don't really know, except that I know it's a way to have a distributed PA system in a hall or anywhere you'd put a PA.

1:01And the software is basically using objects to place those objects, time and phase level alignment, to place them given the speaker system that you have. So it's an object-based PA system. And then so you can either take individual channels or groups of channels and place them in a in a PA system. What I was looking at it for was a hall that's primarily going to be a PA system for just basic voice lift.

1:34But sometimes we'll have stereo playback and sometimes we'll have multi-channel playback. So you could take the multi-channels and you could assign where you want the left, center, right, and the surround speakers, where you want them to come from. And the idea is this system is supposed to do its best job, as all object-oriented systems do, in making sound like it's coming from that space for everyone in the space.

1:59So it's designed for PA systems covering large areas where most of the audience is not sitting in the sweet spot. But I'm just wondering if anyone's actually used the system or actually experienced the system. I don't know anything about it. I thought it was very interesting when the sphere opened, how they were saying that they could assign areas of the audience to say,

2:29you're going to hear the show in German, you're going to hear the show in Spanish. you know like because i think i think the place has like 1200 speakers in the uh in the in the sphere but anyway no it's interesting you're off by at least a factor of 10 how many how many speakers are in the are in the space there was a hundred thousand speakers in the space okay so

2:54yeah i was off a bit um individual drivers let's let's put it that way mickey what do you have to add yeah um i i haven't used a dnb immersive um product uh yet but i have uh played around with the the um acoustics elisa as well as the mayor space map uh they're they're what you would expect from an object-based system uh i don't know what the specific differences are but haven't played around

3:29with both the L-Acoustic solution as well as the mayor one there. They're, they're, they're comparable. Of course, the way you interact with, with each differ. Space map, I think has some, gives you the ability to control it in a more dynamic and creative way, in my opinion, compared to ELISA, but it's object-based mixing, yeah, they're, they're, they're what you can do in one platform.

3:58you can also do in the other. Cool. Alexander, let's go to the next question. This one comes in from Paul Valhusen in Austin, Texas. If you had to teach audio to video person in one hour, what's the order? Gain staging, mic distance, room, then everything else. What do you cut? Hmm. I think this would be a perfect time to reach out to our friend,

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MENTIONED IN THE ANSWER
DMB Soundscape→EL Acoustics ELISA→Meyer Sound SpaceMap→The Sphere→
ALSO IN THIS EPISODE

12 more questions
from Office Hours | Wednesday | September 16, 2026.

The whole episode →
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