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Immersive audio design with EM Acoustics at Legoland Windsor Resort’s new Woodland Village

Opened in May 2024, Woodland Village is a new accommodation site at Legoland Windsor Resort, encompassing an entertainment and hospitality space, and The Clubhouse Restaurant & Bar, which required the integration of an immersive, zoned audio system to enhance the guest experience.

David Shepherd of DS Audio led the sound design on the project, having worked with Legoland Windsor Resort on previous areas within the park. Shepherd collaborated with the internal technical team and integrators, JPSL, to design and install an EM Acoustics system that would provide immersive background audio and sound reinforcement for onstage performances.

“The Clubhouse required highly intelligible, zoned audio and an entertainment system to support a small stage area that sits alongside the restaurant and bar”, explains Shepherd. “They wanted to bring the ‘woodland feel’ inside, so we used the sound design to produce a soundscape that could play different bird and wildlife sounds in a realistic, immersive way. The system also needed to be able to switch to a performance system for audiences to enjoy the on-stage entertainment.”

One of the key requirements for the park was that the system would integrate into the site-wide Q-Sys infrastructure - which EM Acoustics’ amplifier range offers - whilst the Legoland team were already confident in EM Acoustics loudspeakers as they have been used on several installations within the resort in previous years. “The Woodland Village was a different project, in that we were not just aiming for simple mono or stereo playback, but an immersive soundscape that really transported guests into the right environment”, says Mark Boyce, Innovations Manager at Legoland Windsor Resort.

The Clubhouse space was split into four audio zones for the purpose of the sound design. Zone 1 comprises the bar and open entertainment area. The other three zones are defined to facilitate the immersive audio effectively and enable the Clubhouse management to extend or reduce the background audio during performances, depending on audience size and preferences.

In Zone 1, the small stage area is equipped with a pair of EMS-81Xs and an S-48 subwoofer. Stage foldback for monitoring is through a single EMS-61 loudspeaker. An Allen & Heath mixing console and Sennheiser EWDx head-worn and handheld mics provide a complete toolkit for hosting a variety of family-friendly performances at The Clubhouse.

The remainder of zones 2-4 are installed with a total of 48 EMS-41 loudspeakers to facilitate the immersive system, with low-end reinforcement from a further three S-48 subs. Four DiQ10D amplifiers from EM Acoustics complete the system, with each loudspeaker on its own channel to allow for the independent control needed in an immersive installation. All loudspeakers are hidden behind foliage in the ceiling.

To create the immersive environment, complete with an array of birdsongs and woodland nature sounds, Shepherd created over a dozen audio stems of differing lengths and contents in both mono and multichannel formats. Each stem has its own individual mapped route of loudspeakers to travel across the space. This logic was then installed into the Q-Sys System, where sixteen channels of audio playback are looped in sections throughout the day to achieve an immersive experience that sounds natural and random.

As visitors pass through the space, the sounds of nature appear to move with them. The addition of acoustic treatment in the roof helps to minimise reverberation, resulting in a dry, realistic soundscape.

(Photos: EM Acoustics)

www.emacoustics.co.uk

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