Beno�t Gilg's AMBEO Insights

Benoît Gilg

AMBEO Expert Stories AMBEO Expert Stories Benoît Gilg founded the company YASTA with Louise Bardet. Surrounded by an inspired and dedicated team, they have been creating innovative and competitive recording systems, as well as cost effective installations adapted to all situations.

I mix 3D audio as if I was blowing up a balloon of sound.
For years I’ve been fascinated by space, acoustic space. It took me quite some time to distinguish between space and the multi-microphone mix independently from the format. To find the acoustic space in mono is the reference for me. It requires a specific compositional task coupled with sound treatment techniques. It’s thanks to years of experience in recording sound sources, mainly musical with coupled stereo recording techniques, that I eventually disassociated these two notions. If smartphones had existed, I would have been delighted and saved a lot of research time by using Neumann’s “Recording Tools” App which helps for setting up stereo mic techniques. 3D audio is an extension, a continuity which offers to live a pretty incredible physiological experience. I started exploring it through film and cinema as I’m often asked to mix concerts in 5.1 and 7.1 and more recently in 3D 11.1 and 9.1 in the case of personal experimentation.

My quest lies upon mixing ‘music’ essentially with a head-on or raw layer from stage, coupled with a second dimension of spatial information, which is acoustically thought of and constitutes the multichannel shroud. These two layers are treated more or less together according to the style of music. The multichannel shroud, included for amplified pop rock music, is composed of additional microphones further from the source on certain instruments and occasionally more diffused.

„The moment it’s connected to the music mix, it enables a realistic live concert hall sound experience.“

Concerning the audience and the concert hall, the idea is to have an acoustical imprint of the space and additional microphones for audience capture.
The cube is a perfectly indicated tool to record this imprint of the venue where the performance is happening. The moment it’s connected to the music mix, it enables a realistic live concert hall sound experience. It helps to transport the listener into the show with an enhanced timbre from the front and a stronger impact in the case of amplified music.

This experience with the cube has been a recent discovery for me. I’ll need the upcoming months to deepen the experiments with various colors of microphones, such as the D01 or Neumann’s KMD series, which offer undeniable dynamic advantages.

Man holding a small dog in a dimly lit blue environment.

About Benoît Gilg

Benoît Gilg is still young but he has already been doing sound for more than half of his life.
After a career start where he teams up with the rising stars of Parisian free jazz and notably records Akosh.S Unit, he decides to enlarge his horizons by taking charge of the monitor mixes on the tours of Mireille Mathieu and Juliette Greco. He thus develops a certain quality for adaptability.

Widening his experience, Benoît makes then his first steps into the world of film and participates, among others, in «Seaside» by Julie Lopez Curval (sound editing) and «To Be and to Have» by Nicolas Philibert (music recording). This allows him to confirm his passion for performance and brings him back to his first motive, the love of music.
In 2004, Benoît starts to work with Sombrero and Co where he quickly finds himself at the head of broadcast sound for music festivals (Arte, MCM, M6, radio, internet…). Impassioned by the contrast, he encounters France and its wide range of musical styles at festivals; from « Vieilles Charrues » to « Rock en Seine », or from « Jazz sous les Pommiers » to « Jazz Nancy Pulsations », as well as from « Hellfest » to « Transmusicales ». In 2011 he creates the company YASTA with Louise Bardet. Surrounded by an inspired and dedicated team, they create innovative and competitive recording systems, cost effective installations adapted to all situations. Using these tools, YASTA focuses their ears on around 200 live music mixes annually including such artists as PJ Harvey, Lenny Kravitz, Pixies, Nathalie Stutzmann, Nicholas Angelich. Certain artistic collaborations result in the production of commercial DVDs: Melody Gardot, Eddy Mitchell, Scorpions, Soulfly, Dagoba, Jacques Higelin, Kendji Girac. Recently, Benoit has mixed ‘on air’ in 5.1 the concert of Eddy Mitchell simultaneously broadcast in numerous movie theatres.