Longtime U2 live sound engineer Joe O’Herlihy has pulled back the curtain on the monster sound system powering the band’s groundbreaking Las Vegas Sphere residency.
Speaking to U2.com, O’Herlihy reveals that he received a call from Bono to check out the Sphere and its sound system in as early as August 2021.
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“[Bono asked] if I could go over to Berlin and see if I could break it.” the engineer recalls. “That has been my brief since year dot. And to be perfectly honest, I tried my level best and I couldn’t break it.”
“I went to Leipzig, to the Congress Messe where there was an exhibition of the sound system – the first time they’d put together sixty of these boxes. They had industry types like myself give it a listen. I was scheduled to have a brief demo, but I was so enthused by the whole thing that I actually stayed for the week.”
To give you a sense of what O’Herlihy was dealing with, the ‘Sphere Immersive Sound’ system — developed by Berlin company Holoplot — is comprised of 1,586 fixed and 300 mobile Holoplot X1 Matrix Array loudspeaker modules, and features a total of 167,000 individually amplified loudspeaker drivers.
Using advanced 3D Audio-Beamforming technology, the system delivers highly precise, consistent and crystal-clear audio to the audience. The entire sound system is also completely hidden behind Sphere’s 160,000 square foot interior LED display plane, which wraps up, over and around the audience for a fully immersive environment.
Ready to put the system through its paces, O’Herlihy brought multitrack recordings of U2 tours held in venues across the world, which included the Sydney Cricket Ground and the 55,000-capacity Phillipene Arena in Manilla.
“I did that to get an idea of the sonic value of all of those,” says O’Herlihy, who was blown away by what he found. “I ran extremely loud and I ran extremely hard to see if I could break it or not. The sub-bass and all of that energy was second-to-none.”
“When Adam [Clayton] steps on the [Moog] Taurus pedals it’s like a low-end heaven. When you deliver it at full-pelt it’s got an incredible wow factor.”
O’Herlihy soon followed up by sending Bono and The Edge an email detailing his findings, which ultimately paved the way for the 40-show run of Achtung Baby Live that concluded earlier this year: “My opening line was, ‘this is going to be quite a biblical report’, because this is what happened. Eight pages later after explaining everything that I had been through, my parting shot on it was – ‘you guys definitely have to the best the first band into The Sphere, because this is the future.’”
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