How the Ambient Sound at Walt Disney World Works

[DocMcHulk]

I thought this was a very interesting article (vai BoingBoing):

Noah sez, "An interview with the man who designed the ambient sound at Disney World, ensuring a constant experience rather than one that ends with the end of the ride. It was initially a little uneven, with sound changing volumes depending on where you stood, so they used algorithms to position 15,000 speakers around the park so that the levels would never change."

I like the way there's often running water or waterfalls between different soundscapes to act as a white-noise buffer. It's subtle but incredibly effective. You almost never hear two contrasting soundscapes at once.

In the mid 1990's, the park started researching the problem. It would eventually find no existing solution, so the engineers had to design and construct, on their own, one of the most complex and advanced audio systems ever built. The work paid off: today, as you walk through Disney World, the volume of the ambient music does not change. Ever. More than 15,000 speakers have been positioned using complex algorithms to ensure that the sound plays within a range of just a couple decibels throughout the entire park. It is quite a technical feat acoustically, electrically, and mathematically.

As we land, I ask Mr Q what he considers the highlight of his career. He describes how he wrote some software for "manufacturing emotion" with the thousands of new speakers in the park. The system he built can slowly change the style of the music across a distance without the visitor noticing. As a person walks from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland, for example, each of the hundreds of speakers slowly fades in different melodies at different frequencies so that at any point you can stop and enjoy a fully accurate piece of music, but by the time you walk 400 feet, the entire song has changed and no one has noticed.​

 

[EPCOTPluto]

Nice article.

And yet they can't fix blown-out BGM speakers around EPCOT, can't they? :fork:

 

[Innoventions]

Great Find, Thanks for sharing very cool!!!

 

[raven]

Nice article.

And yet they can't fix blown-out BGM speakers around EPCOT, can't they? :fork:

I notice this probably more than anyone when I work on 3rd shift. :brick:

 

[worldfanatic]

Never thought about that.
Very interesting!
Thanks!

 

[SirNim]

Sounds like a microphone array system but in reverse.

 

[fractal]

cool article - thanks!

 

[westie]

We were at DCA and had a room that bordered on the park. At arround midnight, while the park was closed, I was sitting on the balcony and you could here people laughing and screaming and rides in motion yet, the entire park was empty! I guess its a type of white noise they play to make it seem like the park is full? And, I could not tell where it was coming from or from which one of the 15,000 speakers? Wow!

 

[tiaragirl]

That is SO COOL. The background music really makes the parks.. I hate returning home to no background music.

 

[Rob562]

The article is a little mis-leading in using the line that the "volume never changes". While they meant it as the volume not changing because you're in a "dead zone" between speakers or that the *percieved* volume never changes, in fact the output volume does change.

Something not mentioned is the system in place to ensure that the background music is always kept just in the background, regardless of ambient crowd noise. The system listens to the ambient sound level of an area, and then adjusts the volume of the background music to always keep the music just in the background, at the proper level, no matter how noisy or quiet an area is. There's also a delay built in so that a short burst of noise, like a loud group walking past, wouldn't mess up the overall volume.

Our Keys to the Kingdom guide demonstrated this to us. We were on the pathway near the wishing well by the castle. He hopped up on the wall, had us note the sound level of the music (which was barely perceptible because the pathway was empty), and then he started talking to us very loudly. After about 30 seconds he suddenly stopped and went silent. Sure enough, the music was noticeably louder than it had been when we first walked up.

Quite interesting stuff.

-Rob

 

[EpcotServo]

This is why Disney will always be better than Universal, and it comes down to one simple word:

"Volume"

:lol:

Seriously, I like things loud, but the key is knowing when to not give people ear bleeds, like, say, when walking streets.

(^Oh, and I really think that tour guide was putting one over on you. :lol: )

 

[EPCOT Explorer]

This is why Disney will always be better than Universal, and it comes down to one simple word:

"Volume"

:lol:

Seriously, I like things loud, but the key is knowing when to not give people ear bleeds, like, say, when walking streets.

(^Oh, and I really think that tour guide was putting one over on you. :lol: )

:lol:

I must say, though...Aug 08 @ EPCOT....LwtL/TL BGM to Inno BGM made me want to scream. Didn't pick up any problems in MK, this year, though.

*loves MSUSA loop*

 

[vintageepcot]

Nice article.

And yet they can't fix blown-out BGM speakers around EPCOT, can't they? :fork:

Are those the ones that are stacked with the drops covering them. Epcot innoventions is so neglected.