Would you agree there are better ways to achieve this coverage than speakers every few metres, even if they may have crates/hessian or a post-oops coverup they can quickly concoct.
Obviously done to try improve the guest experience, but a slightly dystopian method 'You WILL enjoy this music on the rapids'!!
Probably yes. Although the solution is not terrible, it is not the best way of deploying either. The one advantage you do get from using so many speakers so close on CRR is there will be no playback delay to the ear. Playback delay being audio from different speakers arriving at your ears at different times, giving a very hard to hear and loose sound.
It is most notable when using speech and other non musical announcements. This is a big problem outdoors for any audio setup. Wind, atmospheric conditions, other audio sources (rapids / water) and the general larger / uneven distances between the speakers themselves and your ear can play a big part in having speakers that fire audio at exactly the same time, arriving to your ear at different times. The time difference will only be milliseconds, but that is enough to make audio and speech in particular, very hard to hear by the ear when being fired from multiple uneven audio sources.
Having them so close completely eradicates this problem. Meaning audio and voice announcements will be heard by the end user crisp and clear at all times. There are very few places on the park if any, where you will be stood between a set of speakers that are all exactly the same distance away from your ear. Meaning audio arrives at different times to your ear. This effect is more noticeable in some areas than other. Water being a very good reflector of sound, meaning this issue of playback delay would be amplified (excuse the pun) even more than in other places, as you would be just as likely to hear the reflected sounds, which are delayed even more, as you would be the audio from a speaker.
The general idea with placing them so close, you are much more likely to hear the few speakers that are closest to you than the others further away, as the close ones will somewhat cancel out the 'background' audio from speakers much further away. Thus reducing this problem quite significantly actually. It requires the most investment and work without a doubt, but it is the most effective at solving this issue.
Maybe and probably that is why they have done it like they have.
