On January 19, the large-scale panoramic sound original musical “Where the Flowers are Blooming” successfully premiered at Liaoning Grand Theater. The play was created by the Liaoning Song and Dance Ensemble (Liaoning National Orchestra). Our partner EZPro has cooperated with the sound design team to provide immersive PA system solutions and technical support.
Context of the musical
“Where the Flowers are Blooming” is based on the 70 years of ecological management of windproof and desert controls in Zhangwu County, Fuxin City, Liaoning Province, which is a masterpiece that presents Liaoning’s regional characteristics.
Audio technology
The musical was produced with Astro Spatial Audio immersive sound engine, 16 x ezacoustics IMC-8 were configured as surround loudspeakers and 4 as height loudspeakers to realize the immersive sound effect.
According to the layout of the on-site loudspeakers, the modeling of the venue was completed in the immersive sound engine. The microphones, music tracks and sound effects were uniformly sent to the immersive sound engine in the form of audio objects for spatial localization. The vocal microphones were grouped and assigned to the 2×3 positions in the stage area according to the actors’ standing positions, so as to achieve the unity of the actors’ visual positions and sound image localization.
Production
The music tracks were presented in the form of stereo STEMS. Depending on the musical expression, they were arranged with different depths and widths, which greatly improved the separation of the instruments and better conveyed the mood of the music to the audience. The spatial moving sound effects were triggered in real-time via OSC commands through pre-drawn moving trajectories in order to achieve abundant dynamic moving sound effects. The excellent algorithms of the Astro Spatial Audio immersive sound engine effectively avoid problems such as comb filtering and the Doppler effect to create fully object-based, sophisticated immersive audio for the audience.
The musical “Where the Flowers are Blooming” took two years to produce, with nearly one hundred participants. Through diverse music and stage performances, it demonstrated the profound connotation of desert control spirit in Zhangwu. The utilization of immersive audio technology has injected new vitality into this work. With the help of advanced sound field simulation and localization technology, the live sound environment was accurately reproduced. The perfect integration of music, sound effects and stage performance has created a unique artistic experience.
