Park Audio, Lighting and Everything Geeky

[zerogravity]

Are the cannons still in situ today?

They are indeed, and sounding good with the new soundtrack (which I personally prefer).
Although the condition of them I can't say. I did notice last year a pigeon chilling in one when the older soundtrack wasn't on!

 

[ChristmasPud]

Surely if the park used one speaker manufacturer there would be a consistent sound

Sound characteristics are affected by model and type of speaker, what it's doing and where it's placed. The idea that a manufacturer has its own sound is a bit far fetched. Unless it's a patchwork of old and new sound systems with a mix of different models etc, then yes it will more than likely sound very disjointed (Duel), but again that's to do with more than brand.

and it’ll be easier to maintain due to the fact that engineers won’t need to adapt to different multiple systems and therefore it would take less time and save some money too.

We're talking at most a couple minutes here to set up different speaker formats. If they're an audio technician who knows what they're doing then there really won't be any issue and it wouldnt matter what brand speaker it was.

To me it just shows a complete lack of attention to detail when you see multiple audio systems across an attraction.

Which attractions are you referring to? Not being sarcastic, genuinly asking. From what I've seen Alton Towers tends to be consistent within indivual rides, but homogenising the whole park would be pointless and far more expensive.

Imagine having to change every single sound system on park to match whenever a new ride opened with a different system, since the previously used models were no longer sold or technology had evolved. You may as well say a park should have all its rides manufactured by the same company and designed by the same designer. You can get a cohesive park experience without drawing arbitrary lines like that.

I see what you're thinking but consistent brand just doesn't affect the park's sound as much you expect.

 

[DistortAMG]

Sound characteristics are affected by model and type of speaker, what it's doing and where it's placed. The idea that a manufacturer has its own sound is a bit far fetched. Unless it's a patchwork of old and new sound systems with a mix of different models etc, then yes it will more than likely sound very disjointed (Duel), but again that's to do with more than brand.

The idea that a manufacturer has it's own sound is a bit far fetched? Really? No. Sound characteristics are affected by model and type of speaker. YES! But they can also be affected by a lot more.

Companies use proprietary and or their own unique processing along the audio chain to give specific responses to audio to make their speakers sound as good as they possibly can, in the situation they are in. This goes from home audio all the way to top end stuff. The main things that can and are added to sound are colour and tone to varying degrees, too get the sound and a specific manufacturers speakers too sound as good as they can.

The more expensive a pair of monitoring monitors the more 'accurate' the sound will be, aka it will have less of it's own unique manufacturers sound. Good monitors will flatten the frequency response as much as possible to so you truly hear the input audio as true as possible. Essential for mixing down music and producing it. Not essential for pro or hifi audio, in a theatrical, live or home setup, hence why most stuff like that never has a flat frequency response. Flat responses are pretty much limited to speakers in a studio.

Essentially, the whole reason why studio monitors exist and are an essential tool is literally because manufacturers have their own 'sound' so you could never properly mix or produce music on a setup and have it sounding the same on a different one, to put it very basicly and crudely.

There are people out there that can tell you, with almost 100% accuracy what manufacture a speaker is just by listening to it. Yes it is a very subtle difference but the difference is their. Unless you have a trained mixing and mastering ear you might struggle to hear the difference. But the fact people can do it, sort of strengthens my point some more.

 

[DiogoJ42]

Makes sense. In much the same way as I could tell you what company made the cameras used to shoot video footage, based on colour response.

 

[ChristmasPud]

To save this entering wine-tasting territory.. What you say about monitors vs other uses is true in theory, but that's not quite what I was getting at. I meant the idea that a person visiting the park would have a more 'consistent' sound experience if the speakers were all the same brand is far fetched.

Once you're beyond cheapo ranges, the "unique" characteristics of particular brands will only be discernible in isolation, or if you're a longtime audio engineer. Sound systems in installation are affected much more by many other fundamental factors than manufacturer brand.

Guests aren't guru sound engineers, but they are still affected by a good sound system. The point of a sound system in a theme park is to create the right effect, whether that's ambiance, sound effect (spot FX, high bass moments), outdoor or indoor musical backing etc. It's a totally different environment to in a studio.

Therefore sound systems should be chosen according to the effect desired than according to brand. Chances are you can get mostly the right results under one manufacturer anyway, if they offer a good range. But then you have to consider value too.

Just to add that I work with audio, I've mixed & mastered audio, I have worked occasionally in professional mixing studios, my family's background is in sound engineering (for better or worse, haha).

I'm not a sound engineer, but in my experience I know that the obsession with brands has some truth (in terms of quality and frequency response for certain models), but is lot of hot air in practice. A particular brand may have a characteristic to some of its models, but a brand don't have an exclusive sound.

It would be pretentious to think that homogenising an entire park's sound system would improve the guest experience.

 

[DistortAMG]

Half of your point is not the point I was making though. I was not regarding guest experiences or anything like that, not even regarding audio in a theme park setting for part of my point. But just pointing out some specifics of audio that you mentioned but were not true. I do agree with a lot of what you mention though. You are right, never disputed that just minor differences. Haha this is what makes this forum so great I guess, good intellectual conversation.

I disagree with putting a parks sound system to one brand, it makes absolutely no sense. The right speakers should be picked for the right job. At different times in a parks lifetime different brands will come and go and naturally different brands will have better speakers to do the best job at different times. But like you say you can get the pretty much the right results under most brands give or take some small variances in the sound.

There has always been an obsession with brands to some point, some companies have always stood up above the rest in terms of better sound quality.

There is one small company based down south called RC1 who are turning heads in the live sound market at the moment though. They offer some highly efficient sound systems with really impressive stats in terms of throw, dispersion, sound pressure levels and overall system clarity at very high volume. Stats that at the moment have been unseen by any of the big players. Really impressive systems and need to be heard to really be believed. Probably a bit too much power for your average theme park, but if there is any company that has their own unique sound, they really would be the ones. I am sure they use water cooled speaker coils or something along those lines, because the amount of power they manage to get out of their speaker drivers, without compromising sound quality is unbelievable (until you hear them!).

Anyway, sorry to verge off topic....

 

[DistortAMG]

Not strictly Alton Towers, but here is a great document / article from 2007 from Bose about their work with Tussauds in providing excellent sound for the attractions.

This was at a time when Tussauds almost exclusively worked with Bose across all their parks. Or to be more specific, Bose worked closely with Tussauds Studios, which then naturally filtered to the parks. A nice little bit of detail into some of Alton's attractions in there.

 

[Zeock]

Not strictly Alton Towers, but here is a great document / article from 2007 from Bose about their work with Tussauds in providing excellent sound for the attractions.

This was at a time when Tussauds almost exclusively worked with Bose across all their parks. Or to be more specific, Bose worked closely with Tussauds Studios, which then naturally filtered to the parks. A nice little bit of detail into some of Alton's attractions in there.

'Oblivion was created in 2001'
Erm... No. There was also another mistake in the same sentence.

 

[RyanUK]

Not strictly Alton Towers, but here is a great document / article from 2007 from Bose about their work with Tussauds in providing excellent sound for the attractions.

This was at a time when Tussauds almost exclusively worked with Bose across all their parks. Or to be more specific, Bose worked closely with Tussauds Studios, which then naturally filtered to the parks. A nice little bit of detail into some of Alton's attractions in there.

Bose are good. The green outdoor speakers certainly pack a punch. They’re not often seen these days, generally they’ve replaced them with cheaper ones such as JBL.

 

[jmc]

Bose are good. The green outdoor speakers certainly pack a punch. They’re not often seen these days, generally they’ve replaced them with cheaper ones such as JBL.

The Bose speakers are good, although there’s barely any left on the park now. The ones they use are noticeably worse quality.

Fun fact:- one of the original Ug Land rock themed speakers is still limping along having been moved just outside the Towers/Gardens.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[DistortAMG]

When Bose had their speakers properly working, configured and setup by Bose on the parks themselves. They sounded incredible, truly great audio.

I suspect the Bose left on park now, like everything else, have been tinkered and messed with over the years, adjusted / swapped the amplifiers and messed with the processing. Which leads to a very different sound than originally intended and what they are capable of. Plus, no doubt some of them are very worn by now. Enduring the British weather, probably driven too hard at times and just general wear and tear over what would be hundreds of thousands of hours of use at this point. The fact some are still going, outdoors and after two or more decades, is testament to their quality.

Ohm, the speaker of choice nowadays, work pretty well I think. Their audio engineers are not quite upto scratch with Bose's decades and decades of experience though.

I do not think their processing in the audio chain as as good as Bose either. That is a somewhat subjective opinion though. But take Hex for example, while sounding impressive somewhat still, I am sure it used to sound far better back in its opening years. With a fresh Bose setup.

I noticed those old rock speakers from Ug Land back in October. When walking up past the lake towards Hex from Mutiny Bay you can see some of the left. They were custom made by Tussauds for Ug Land and housed the commonly used Bose 151 / 325se lould speaker inside (the old design).

Not sure which one as both speakers are in the same enclosure. I would take a guess and say Bose are still inside them today, as they were designed specifically to hold the chassis of that speaker enclosure, so not much else would fit in them.


Any fan of Alton Towers will have seen these everywhere in Alton Towers back in the day, they were in the monorail stations, towers street, stacked on the top of Obivion and queue, on the Spinball break run and Ug Land speakers to name just a few places. These 151 speakers and their identical looking 325se models were by far the most common speaker seen on park, in black and white. Almost every attraction on the park had these for something, be it station announcements or queue line videos, or part of the ride itself. They were everywhere. They used quite a few other different models too, but these were the most common.

I think Spinball and Galactica still have these as did Duel in the station as of last year. They were mounted above the trains in the station when it was Air and used to play the "prepare for air" and "now fly" announcements. I am sure they got a custom air blue paint job too.

 

[djtruefitt]

I think Spinball and Galactica still have these as did Duel in the station as of last year. They were mounted above the trains in the station when it was Air and used to play the "prepare for air" and "now fly" announcements. I am sure they got a custom air blue paint job too.

Duel and Galactica station definitely still have these, however I bet duels get ripped out and replaced by OHM with the refurbishment. I think most of spinballs speakers got replaced a couple of years ago to ohm, but there are still some Bose around.

I think Towers answer to audio now is to just put loads and loads of speakers in an area and turn it up, I’m not sure there’s much thought into location or any kind of sound design.

 

[RyanUK]

When Bose had their speakers properly working, configured and setup by Bose on the parks themselves. They sounded incredible, truly great audio.

I suspect the Bose left on park now, like everything else, have been tinkered and messed with over the years, adjusted / swapped the amplifiers and messed with the processing. Which leads to a very different sound than originally intended and what they are capable of. Plus, no doubt some of them are very worn by now. Enduring the British weather, probably driven too hard at times and just general wear and tear over what would be hundreds of thousands of hours of use at this point. The fact some are still going, outdoors and after two or more decades, is testament to their quality.

Ohm, the speaker of choice nowadays, work pretty well I think. Their audio engineers are not quite upto scratch with Bose's decades and decades of experience though.

I do not think their processing in the audio chain as as good as Bose either. That is a somewhat subjective opinion though. But take Hex for example, while sounding impressive somewhat still, I am sure it used to sound far better back in its opening years. With a fresh Bose setup.

I noticed those old rock speakers from Ug Land back in October. When walking up past the lake towards Hex from Mutiny Bay you can see some of the left. They were custom made by Tussauds for Ug Land and housed the commonly used Bose 151 / 325se lould speaker inside (the old design).

Not sure which one as both speakers are in the same enclosure. I would take a guess and say Bose are still inside them today, as they were designed specifically to hold the chassis of that speaker enclosure, so not much else would fit in them.


Any fan of Alton Towers will have seen these everywhere in Alton Towers back in the day, they were in the monorail stations, towers street, stacked on the top of Obivion and queue, on the Spinball break run and Ug Land speakers to name just a few places. These 151 speakers and their identical looking 325se models were by far the most common speaker seen on park, in black and white. Almost every attraction on the park had these for something, be it station announcements or queue line videos, or part of the ride itself. They were everywhere. They used quite a few other different models too, but these were the most common.

I think Spinball and Galactica still have these as did Duel in the station as of last year. They were mounted above the trains in the station when it was Air and used to play the "prepare for air" and "now fly" announcements. I am sure they got a custom air blue paint job too.

Not so much at Towers, but I remember Thorpe and Chessington in the past having these ply so loud it had pretty much buggered the speaker, and you could hear more of a crackly sound. Again, down at Thorpe, any Bose fan will have noticed the cannon speaker on the inside roof of Inferno’s station. That blasts some serious noise! It was my inspiration to get Bose for my previous computer, just a shame about their lack of bass adjustment.

 

[DistortAMG]

The bass cannons, or the Bose Panaray acoustic wave cannon loudspeaker as they are affectionally known as (not a mouthful right?) are impressive. HEX used to have a fair few inside the Octagon for the bass re enforcement. Now replaced with Ohm front firing subwoofers.

I always remember on Inferno, the Bass Cannons being part of the dispatch audio in the station, was very impressive back in the day. A huge shame they are still in the Inferno station, just not in use any more.

I know at Towers, a lot of the attractions featured limiters in the audio chain, these not only protect people's ears from sharp, sudden loud noises that could come through the speaker for whatever reason. They also protect the speaker from the same and from being pushed to hard. As a speaker can usually handle quite a powerful sharp but short audio input pretty well, much better than they can handle a continuous but long and powerful audio signal, specifically one that is more powerful than the speaker driver can handle, the speaker driver will very quickly ware out in those cases. I cannot say this is across all their systems. But the larger audio setups at Towers such as Hex, certainly did have limiters in place. A fairly common piece of kit in any professional audio setups.

For those who do not know and are interested, a limiter works fairly similar to an audio compressor (not to be confused with compressed audio; such as mp3, flac, wma etc, two totally different things). When a pre defined decibel level is breached, compression is applied to the audio in a ratio format to keep it below said pre defined decibel level, relative to the set ratio. Or in simple terms, it stops the volume of the audio going over a certain volume. Very important for large speaker setups at parks like Alton Towers or anywhere else in fact, you have to protect peoples ears on the large audio setups and you have to protect your expensive investment. The great thing about limiters, is the limit the audio signal no matter how high the volume dial on the amplifiers or mixer is turned up. The higher the volume is turned up, the harder the limiter will have to work, but it still works. For a whole manor of reasons it is good practice to have the volume dials accessible to staff. The limiter can be locked away and is a nice way to ensure said staff (usually not audio technicians) do not accidentally damage the audio equipment when adjusting volumes and what not.

 

[Trooper Looper]

Talking about speakers, what speakers did Duel/The HH use, since most of the original 1992 speakers are still used and are made into the theming of the ride to blend in? Are they Bose, or just standard speakers?

 

[DistortAMG]

Talking about speakers, what speakers did Duel/The HH use, since most of the original 1992 speakers are still used and are made into the theming of the ride to blend in? Are they Bose, or just standard speakers?

I think the ride itself uses fairly bog standard speakers unsure of the brands, it was just before Bose started taking over on park. I know they used a few Bose speakers (the exact ones pictured above) in the drawing room and suspended from the ceiling in the station for the lap bar announcements. I assume these were added at a later date.

Those little 151's were perfect for vocal announcements, the speaker specifications lended themselves perfectly for that application. Hence why they were used alot for vocal audio.

 

[Trooper Looper]

I think the ride itself uses fairly bog standard speakers unsure of the brands, it was just before Bose started taking over on park. I know they used a few Bose speakers (the exact ones pictured above) in the drawing room and suspended from the ceiling in the station for the lap bar announcements. I assume these were added at a later date.

Those little 151's were perfect for vocal announcements, the speaker specifications lended themselves perfectly for that application. Hence why they were used alot for vocal audio.

Ah I see. Though it'll be interesting to see if they'll be replaced with newer speakers for this year since the music is heavily altered by those older speakers.

 

[djtruefitt]

A lot of the speakers in Duel are built in to the theming, I assume these are from 1992. The ending has loads of Bose which I guess we’re all added for Duel, there is a large one hanging from the ceiling just as you go round the last corner in the zombie section. You’ll also see some of the smaller Bose speakers on the wall where the zombies pop up out of the barrels.

 

[Dave]

I don’t understand the geek world’s fascinating with Bose, they are average to good speakers with great marketing. Ohm are pretty much on par quality wise.

 

[dw1812]

Speaking of... I know the Air audio control panel says "BOSE" on it, but I can't for the life of me find out exactly what product it is/was. Any ideas? Thorpe's rides use the same line for their audio control panels. Need it for an NL2 project.