Trying the Immersive Listening Experience at Envelop SF

Pioneering Spatial Audio at Envelop SF

Tonight I attended a weeknight album listening party at a pioneering immersive listening space at Envelop SF. Hosted within the Midway, a popular San Francisco Dogpatch music venue, lies the lesser known but equally vibrant Envelop SF. They've created a 3D audio experience in a carefully crafted space complete with 32 state of the art speakers.

It's no mistake that I attended on the night that one of my favorite albums of all time, In Rainbows by Radiohead, was slated to be played at 7:30. Even if the experience had sucked I would have been stoked to listen to the album in that space but I'm happy to say it was phenomenal all around.

As I walked into the venue I passed through a curtain into a dim space, only lit by the LED lights on the speaker cases and a small projector. They had most definitely been burning incense because the air smelled like an indie girl's college dorm room, but in a comforting way. Not sure if it was for the ambiance or to cover up the smell of everyone who was smoking joints outside before coming in. We were instructed to remove our shoes and take a seat in the ring of legless chairs on the carpet.

Now to get the best listening experience I would recommend sitting towards the center to get the full surround sound vibe. There's no assigned seating and these ones fill up so I would get there at least 15 minutes before to snag one. Just be warned that if you don't know the people across from you I hope you're cool with semi-awkward eye contact. Also, a couple of the people in the center were definitely on some different substances and were not very good at hiding it so yeah there's that.

I sat towards the edge near one of the large tubes of speakers. Sitting that close to one of the speakers took away a little from the whole surround sound experience but the audio quality was great nonetheless. The other guests were very respectful and quiet the whole time and it was overall a very enjoyable session. Not to get too hippie dippy but the sitting on the floor aspect was pretty neat as it made it easier to get immersed in the sound and ground yourself.

Overall it felt like the perfect amount of time to be in that space and I throughly enjoyed the whole album. The sound mixing was top tier; I really love the bass lines on In Rainbows and I was happy I could hear them clearly while they didn't overwhelm the rest of the tracks. 15 Steps, Nude, Weird Fishes, House of Cards, and Jigsaw Falling into Place all stood out as sounding exceptionally good there. This was a perfect relaxing weeknight activity and I was home early enough to type this up and get a good night of sleep before work tomorrow.

More About Envelop SF

If you're interested in stuff like this take a closer look at Envelop SF. They're actually a nonprofit with the mission of connecting and inspiring community through immersive listening experiences. Some other events I saw they have coming up were a special listening of a quadraphonic mix of Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, and a Daft Punk standing only dance listening party.

They have a pretty sweet software called E4L (Envelop for Live), a free, open source immersive audio production tools that work with Ableton Live Suite. Envelop SF also has a radio station playing immersive spatial audio tracks. It's all free but you can become a member or donate to support the project. I'm not affiliated in any way but I do think it's a pretty cool concept.

Thanks for taking the time to read. If you'd like to go yourself check out their upcoming events. Be sure to buy tickets in advance as these do sell out.