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Out Board's Timax Controls Niagara Fury's Soundscape
Niagara Falls Visitor Centre recently opened the doors to its new attraction, Niagara’s Fury. Described as a ‘world-class multi-sensory experience’, this is not an attraction for the faint-hearted: visitors find themselves at the centre of the creation of Niagara Falls. Controlling the complex animated soundscape for this truly immersive experience is Out Board’s TiMax delay matrix and show control software.
US-based distributor, 1602Group, demonstrated the TiMax to Niagara Fury creator, California-based Technifex Inc, who claim they were “so impressed it was immediately added to the budget”. The TiMax delay-based audio imaging solution was clearly a pivotal addition. 1602Group’s Duncan Crundwell, who provided TiMax programming support on-site comments: “It made the howling wind feel much more real and as if you were a part of it. The moving effects were very smooth and you could pinpoint the water droplets as they splashed around you.”
For periods during the show, the room is plunged into darkness without even the benefit of a lit exit sign. Sound is the only effect, and exact positioning of the sound effects is critical for the audience to build an imagined visual image of a waterfall, of icy wind, of drips from the ceiling, or more terrifyingly, of an avalanche of ice, rocks and splintering trees rushing past them.
The TiMax showcontrol software helps match the audio activity with the other sensory elements, most of which are created through a series of technological firsts: seamless, one-screen, 360-degree, high resolution, Dalsa projection – a technology previously used exclusively for satellite and medical imaging; over 170 million litres of water creating real waterfalls and glacial melts across a 56-foot diameter area; also ‘real’ snow, wind and the ability to drop the room temperature by two degrees Celsius in less than three seconds.
The TiMax ImageMaker8 matrix received eight playback sources and feeds them to six channels of JBL surround speakers – one overhead and five positioned around the room – as well as JBL subs and additional custom supersubs capable of reproducing 140dB from 0-30Hz. TiMax handles a variety of sound effects using continuously varying Haas effect delays to create absolute aural realism for each of the 100 visitors within the attraction. Immersive atmospheric effects such as howling wind in a blizzard are experienced with exceptional realism across the whole space rather than obviously sounding like they’re coming from the speakers. To achieve this, the audio tracks receive complex delay treatments which are dynamically cross-matrixed into the speaker feeds to match the actual direction of the mechanically-induced wind and snow flurries.
In one part of the show, the 360-degree projection represents drops of water falling as ice melts. The projection is accompanied by real water drops, illuminated to glow as they fall. The TiMax was programmed to create a very accurate “plop” as the animated drop hits the on-screen water surface, an effect achieved by calculating the exact position on the animation of each drop as it hits the water and creating a related audio image map that is linked to the timecode. TiMax simply locks every time to the correct audio position by tracking the timecode.
21st July 2008
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