Electro-Voice supports Singapore light and water spectacular
Published: ASIA
SINGAPORE: Electro-Voice XVLS enclosures are being used to provide outdoor sound reinforcement for South East Asia’s largest light and water show, located on the doorstep of the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore.
Named Wonder Full, the attraction utilises lasers, searchlights, LEDs, video projectors and giant water screens to create a 360-degree choreographed show with its own original score as recorded by the 140-piece Bratislava Symphony Orchestra.
Designed by international production company Laservision, the attraction was reportedly three years in the making, employing the expertise of 100 specialists sourced from the company’s Hong Kong, Australian and Singaporean offices.
The completed show boasts three water screens illuminated by high definition video projection and optically pumped full colour laser systems which face the audience at the Event Plaza, Marina Bay Sands venue.
While Wonder Full’s score is broadcast over 103.9FM, the official Marina Bay Sands radio station, spectators can also enjoy it in person thanks to an Electro-Voice loaded 7.1 surround sound system that serves the show, generating more than 50,000W of sound reinforcement. Designing the surround system marked the latest collaboration between Laservision and Bryan Davidson, Bosch’s senior engineer / manager for permanent installations.
‘For this project Laservision wanted a high impact surround sound system which would be able to cover approximately 40m,’ Mr Davidson explained. ‘It also had to have a very low profile so as not to obscure the water fountains. I built a model in EASE, finally settling on the EV large format line array system – two vertically stacked EV XVLS deliver a very tight vertical dispersion allowing sound to be thrown across water to the audience area whilst not spilling into other areas.’
The custom water-proofed EV XVLS speakers also boast Electro-Voice’s hydrophobic grill cloth to stop water entering the boxes. Each water screen has two XVLS enclosures.
A further complication was presented by the deck area, where 10,000 spectators can view the show. The area is configurable into three different orientations; it can be a flat deck or either elevated or declined at the front. As a result, the audio system had to work in each one of the orientations and Mr Davidson reportedly spent a great deal of time tweaking the system to achieve the desired performance.
Meanwhile, in order to ensure that technical equipment didn’t impact on the aesthetics of the building, eight 6m multimedia towers, deployed four per side of the audience area, were built to house the rest of the reinforcement system plus extra lighting. When there is no show the cylindrical towers hide and protect the technical equipment, but at show time a lifting mechanism raises the cylinders by 3m, the speakers are moved into position and a searchlight emerges from the top.
‘I placed four EV XLD281 line array cabinets plus an EV X-sub in each media tower which gave me the 7.1 surround sound,’ explained Mr Davidson. ‘These also employ the EV hydrophobic grill cloth. I consulted with Dave Carlson from EV in Burnsville in order to work out the exact grill perforation requirements so that the sound could exit correctly and the cylinder didn’t resonate.’
The loudspeakers are driven by a total of 21 Dynacord H5000 amplifiers, each of which is equipped with an RCM26 remote control module and supervised via Iris-Net. Tying the installation together meanwhile are three NetMax N8000 matrices. Audio distribution is via Cobranet, interfaced by a propriety Laservision show control system.
‘I used SysTune to align the system,’ added Mr Davidson. ‘It has a plug-in module for NetMax so I can open up SysTune and look at the frequency response in one window whilst in the other window I can have the relevant EQ block in NetMax open so I can do real time tuning as I walk around the area.’