CUK in Sounds and Sorcery extravaganza
- Details
On arrival, audience members are given a pair of headphones and an iPod and then invited to wander at their leisure through a series of installations created using a combination of 3D projections, elaborate set designs and spectacular lighting effects, all set to a specially recorded score from the City of Prague Symphony orchestra. As audience members move from one scene to the next, all entirely in their own time, so the music changes accordingly thanks to an elaborate and technically challenging sound design built around Williams Sound Hearing Hotspot technology supplied by CUK Audio and installed by Direct Audio Visual.
The man behind the sound design is independent sound designer, David Gregory. “No-one else would be crazy enough to tackle a project like this, but I like a challenge, so I said yes!” he says.
“Hearing Hotspot is the only product on the market capable of doing what we required,” explains Gregory. “Essentially it allows any venue to stream real-time audio via Wi-Fi from pretty much any source to an individual’s personal device – in this case, an iPod. The sound quality and stereo imaging capabilities (which we tested thoroughly) were good enough to allow me to create the immersive experience that I was looking for.
“The aim was for everyone wearing the headphones to experience the music as if he or she were in the place of the conductor. To enhance the feeling of really ‘big’ sound, we also installed some pretty earth-moving subs in each room to extend the response of the headphones and to enable you not just to hear the sound but to feel it too.”
A customised version of the Hearing Hotspot app was created to override the manual selection of audio sources and instead enable the audio to be triggered via a series of Bluetooth beacons strategically located throughout the venue.
The other requirement was for a rock-solid Wi-Fi system to be installed venue-wide. This was a very important point as it’s ultimately the quality of the Wi-Fi that determines the overall performance of the Hearing HotSpot. Music playback is via Q-Lab and thence to the HotSpot server before being broadcast to the iPods. All transmission is 24-bit at 48kHz, meaning that the audio stays at full digital resolution throughout the chain with no loss of signal quality.
CUK Audio were on hand throughout to coordinate the various demos, field technical questions and assist with system design before introducing the contractors who then bid for the project. Systems integration company, Direct Audio Visual, was selected to design and install the Ruckus wireless system, whilst Recursive AV were called in to customise the Hearing Hotspot app and provide the Bluetooth solution to trigger the audio feed in each room.
“It was a mammoth task from every point of view,” says CUK Audio’s Simon Druce. “Technically, it was a hugely ambitious project and timescales were tight. We were running right up to the wire and it was touch and go if it was all actually going to work, but miraculously, it all came together at the last minute.
“It’s a superb showcase for the Williams Sound Hearing Hotspot technology – I’m pretty sure that when they developed it, they hadn’t even dreamed of an application like this, but it’s a testament to the technology that it does the job and does it well. All of us at CUK Audio are proud to have been involved in the project.”
(Jim Evans)
