Embracing the Senses - Immersive Experience at new Yamaha Brand Base

In June 2024, Yamaha opened a new brand base in Minato Mirai, Yokohama. Welcoming more than 100,000 people in its first month through word of mouth and social media coverage alone, Active Field Control (AFC) systems help to fully immerse visitors in a sensory world of sound, sight and feel.

Taking advantage of the busy Yokohama Minato Mirai location, the new Yamaha showcase is designed to attract people to a welcoming, comfortable and stimulating experience, arousing their curiosity and an interest in playing music.

Located close to Yokohama railway station, its first floor features an entrance atrium and the Music Canvas zone. On the second floor, a large open plan space connects a café with a relaxing area where visitors can try musical instruments, along with a space for performances by invited artists.

Every hour, the Music Canvas zone features the unique ‘Music Canvas Show’, which links auto-playing instruments with artistic images projected on a giant 10.5m x 14m (35 x 50 feet) display. When the show is not playing, the space has ‘touch’ and ‘play’ areas, where visitors can touch automatically-playing viola, violin and cello, feeling the sound and vibration, as well as playing a piano with one finger and hearing AI accompaniment.

These simple-but-effective interactive experiences are designed to inspire curiosity, prompting visitors to think about learning to play an instrument and make sounds themselves.

Creating this multi-sensory, immersive way of experiencing music presented a number of technical challenges. As well as making musical instruments play themselves in a convincingly human way, it was important to envelop visitors in an inviting, immersive soundscape which triggered a positive emotional response.

AFC is Yamaha’s comprehensive sound space management system. This is achieved through two functions: AFC Enhance, which controls spatial resonance, and AFC Image, which controls the positions of sound sources.

Normally in the Music Canvas Zone, an AFC Image system creates an immersive soundscape for the self-playing viola, violin and cello, using a matrix of 23 NEXO ID24 speakers and two IDS108 subwoofers, plus a pair of Yamaha VXL1-24 slim line array speakers. The AFC Image system draws the listener’s attention to the different instruments by acoustically locating the sounds within the space.

In a concept called Sound Gravity, first exhibited by Yamaha at 2019 Milan Design Week, the instruments are located in bespoke furniture with vibration speakers attached to the bridge, triggered by content from a multi-channel player. This is routed to and from the AFC processor by a DME7 digital mixing engine. When the visitor sits with the instruments, the concept is designed to envelop the body with the sound and vibration, producing a heightened sense of ‘sinking into the sound’.

Meanwhile, sound from the ’one finger’ piano is picked up by an installed microphone and processed in real time by the AFC system, which adds 3D reverb.

When the Music Canvas Show is playing, the audio is routed via the DME7 to the speaker matrix.

Performances of the automated instruments are again played back from the multi-track player, synchronised to the screen content with timecode.

Yamaha has been a world leader in self-playing pianos since the 1970s, the drum kit has a vibration speaker attached to each drum and cymbal, plus there’s a double bass with a vibration speaker attached to the bridge. This concept is what Yamaha calls Real Sound Viewing, a system which preserves and reproduces artist performances exactly as they were originally played.

The system can also host live performances in the Music Canvas Zone, with or without a sound engineer. When an engineer is present, a DM7 Compact digital mixer is used to mix inputs from a pair of Rio1608-D2 I/O racks, before the sound is routed to the AFC system. If needed, a portable system of two DZR15-D loudspeakers and two DXS18XLF-D extended low frequency subwoofers can be patched in.

For small events without an engineer, sound is routed from the inputs of another Rio1608-D2, then routed to the DME7 and through to the speaker matrix.

On the second floor, the cafeteria, performance area and instrument space utilise another DM7 Compact mixer, with inputs from background music sources and a pair of handheld microphones. This feeds into another DME7, along with the audio from an AFC Enhance system.

During live recitals, the sound is picked up by ceiling-mounted microphones, then routed via the AFC Enhance system to 20 VXS5 ceiling-suspended speakers and a further pair of VXL1-24 slimline array speakers, which distribute the AFC and BGM sound throughout the area. The AFC Enhance system is programmed to provide four switchable, preset sound fields, each designed to complement a different style of performance. A portable STAGEPAS 1K PA system can also be patched in, if necessary.

The system for both floors has been designed with very straightforward control. As they are working continuously during business hours, they can be simply switched on in the morning and off in the evening, with human intervention only needed for live events or any situation where an override of the automated system is needed.