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Park Audio, Lighting and Everything Geeky

Having visited today for the first time in 2 years. I noticed immediately a sound improvement in towers street but a sound downgrade in hex. It actually hurt at points in the cinema room. Like seriously what the hell were they thinking of getting rid of Bose. I see they are still using Bose in the main entrance for the TV's but also have some on roof playing background noise.
Above the pizza and pasta it had no high end what so ever. It was a muffeld mess and on Katanga kanion. They've removed Bose along there and there was no bass what so ever by the bridge.
I think personally if they get the sound system wrong on sw8 it will take the audio experience away from the entire ride. Personally I think they should have kept the freespace speakers from the flume, fixed them and used them for sw8.
Their sound systems are a total mess now. Their not even in sync in places wheres Bose did a good job keeping the areas synced up.
 
Rebooting this thread was not the best way to introduce yourself to this forum... ;)

I thought the sound was fine (bar Hex), but I'll listen extra hard today.
 
Rick said:
Rebooting this thread was not the best way to introduce yourself to this forum... ;)
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The park's audio is generally quite rubbish now, has been for a long time. But that's what you get when you don't employ AV Technicians.

The AV around the whole park is a shocking state of affairs to be honest. Again Towers/Merlin don't understand the importance of AV in the modern theme park.

I find it strange how the penny had finally dropped when they released a statement a couple of years ago saying visitor expectations are higher, yet so far they've not upped their game.
 
PeteB said:
The park's audio is generally quite rubbish now, has been for a long time. But that's what you get when you don't employ AV Technicians.

The AV around the whole park is a shocking state of affairs to be honest. Again Towers/Merlin don't understand the importance of AV in the modern theme park.

I find it strange how the penny had finally dropped when they released a statement a couple of years ago saying visitor expectations are higher, yet so far they've not upped their game.
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In Merlin's defence, they made a lot of new IMAscore soundtracks in 2016 along with the Heritage soundtrack in 2017. Or are you talking about how it's kept?
 
Matt N said:
In Merlin's defence, they made a lot of new IMAscore soundtracks in 2016 along with the Heritage soundtrack in 2017. Or are you talking about how it's kept?
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We have a saying the AV industry - "crap music played on a good system sounds better than good music played on a crap system".

Its absolutely pointless investing in new soundtracks when the park hasn't got decent equipment to play it on, or the qualified employees to install the equipment and maintain it.
 
The employees might be great at what they do, they might be rubbish. Even that doesn't really matter anymore when Merlin think of AV as expendible when it comes to budgeting (like most corporate entertainment companies, unfortunately), and they know they can get away with drastically cutting quality without public realising what they're missing.

Had the right budget/protocols really gone into investing & maintaining in AV, the whole public would really feel the difference without ever being aware of the technical side.

It's like watching a movie in a great cinema compared to a poor one. A cinema might have a popular brand, but actually have a low grade projector and cheap speakers inside. Public won't come out saying "the projector wasn't good", because it's not their job to know the technical side and they saw the movie either way! But they will feel comparatively very underwhelmed watching it, than if it had it been decent system. They will get far worse value for money and be oblivious to the great experience they could have had.

If you have access to one, try listening to bassy music on a big sound system compared to laptop speakers or something. Ok you're not going to get amazing quality outdoors in a theme park, but its the same principle. And imagine it's the first time you'd ever heard the track - you'd be far more likely to get hooked by the proper quality playback than the tinny low quality. You don't even have to care about sound tech to realise the big difference.

So that's the public. Another problem though is that different tech people can have different preferences of what makes a 'good' sound system (as this thread proves!) and when the client (Merlin) doesn't really care about this sort of thing, it's sort of thrown in the air without any standard or protocol to go by.

So then it's easier to just adopt the "most people wont care" attitude and save yourself £1000s. For guests, I think that's a very short term, poor value way of maintaining a park.
 
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DiogoJ42 said:
Yup. Kids these days listen to music on their phones. They wouldn't know a decent sound system if it slapped them in their face.
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Was just on about this the other day. I find it depressing how despite our advances in technology and decreasing costs of manufacture, everyone is listening to music on crap speakers these days - a phone, a laptop, or if they're REALLY into music then a bluetooth speaker about the size of a pint glass lol.

I grew up in an era when everyone was in to home Hi-Fi's, everyone wanted the one with the biggest speakers. Now you can't even buy a Hi Fi. Even Halfords don't stock all the aftermarket car audio equipment they used to, since the modified car scene died. So not many people have access to a full range audio system.
 
I still have the same pair of speakers.... and massive subwoofer.... that I bought from Crack Converters in 1999. They work a treat with my modern surround amp (Obviously the centre and surround speakers are crappy plastic things).

It always boggles my mind that my iPad has better quality speakers than @Kelpie's Viao laptop. That's not a compliment to Apple, mind. It's an insult to Sony. ;)
 
DistortAMG said:
Ohm speakers are very good arguably better than Bose in certain scenarios. Especially where high levels of sound re enforcement are required. But if the system isn't tuned properly it is not going to sound good regardless of the manufacturer.

We used Ohm mid top units alongside Danley sound Jericho bassbins for one of the Drum and Bass arenas at Glastonbury this year. Configured in a point source setup and driven by 70KW of Crown amplifiers. The system was tuned so that sound pressure levels and decibels were maximised within the arena, with earth shattering bass and crystal clear mid and high end. While keeping sound levels outside the arena to a minimum. This was partly possible due to the quality of Ohm speakers.

Just like Electril Bill has said many times that you need proper scenic artists and lighting designers to properly do things on rides. The same goes with audio too. The acoustics of buildings like the one Hex is in, are very complex. They audio system needs to be set up properly by a proper sound engineer who takes into account the acoustics of the space to tune the system. Lots of complex maths and equations are involved but it is an essential process to get the sound correct for the specific space. You simply cannot just place speakers any where and hope for the best. You also cannot just swap a speaker for a different one in the same place and expect to get similar results.
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Just a wee note, assuming you're talking about The Temple, it was all Danley and no Ohm at all. With Linea Research DSP and amps. I know because I designed it :) there's a little writeup in this issue of TPi Mag if anybody is interested: https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpisep17_digitallr

For what it's worth and on topic, Danley is used throughout all of the US Disney locations and is available in all weather finish, fully aquatight. I haven't heard the new Ohm at Alton Towers yet but actually found this thread looking for info on some of the bigger rides setup after a friend said it sounded really good.
 
DistortAMG said:
We used Ohm mid top units alongside Danley sound Jericho bassbins for one of the Drum and Bass arenas at Glastonbury this year. Configured in a point source setup and driven by 70KW of Crown amplifiers. The system was tuned so that sound pressure levels and decibels were maximised within the arena, with earth shattering bass and crystal clear mid and high end. While keeping sound levels outside the arena to a minimum. This was partly possible due to the quality of Ohm speakers.
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The Temple?
 
I thought some of the redone parts of Towers audio sounded very mixed recently, some areas were poor, others good. I remembered this thread (for my sins) while I was there and looked, they were all Ohm speakers, the good and the bad.

To my ears, the best of Alton Towers this season sounded not too different from how it sounded before with Bose, just good, decent sound in most areas.

Hex preshow is stil awful sadly, and half the vault is out. Parts of Katanga noticeably poor – this could be a bad transfer of the old KC music they were playing maybe? but sounded patchy anyway as you were walking along, HARSH in your ear for a few steps, then quiet, then LOUD again.

So yeah I find the speaker overhaul a bit random, since it doesnt seem to have achieved much guest-facing? You're never going to get concert sound outdoors at a theme park, but can be powerful where it needs to be and gentle where else.

Still overall Towers is really good for how it uses music!
 
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I have to say that the Wickerman Pre show audio is incredible! It just shows that when Alton put their minds to it they can do a great job! I noticed the ride itself is littered with Ohm speakers, the bass in the pre show is insane. It’s a shame that whilst people are queuing they are picking off the foam on the speakers :rolleyes: why do people feel the need to vandalise everything!

One thing I noticed the other day is that the large speakers on towers street stick out like a sore thumb on those poles this year! The trees used to help disguise them. Why they went with those over stacks of smaller speakers like the Bose 32se's they replaced I don’t know! The QSC small speakers they’ve installed on all of the buildings along towers street are a questionable choice too. I never understand why theme parks like Alton don’t just stick to one audio manufacturer and be done with it!

Anyway, audio seems better this year around the park so let’s hope it improves further over the coming years.
 
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