The Norfolk village of Thursford, known for its steam engines, musical organs and fairground rides, as well as its spectacular theatrical shows, will be delivering a new, immersive sound experience with its Thursford Christmas Spectacular this year, thanks to a state-of-the-art d&b Soundscape from audio technology and solutions company, d&b audiotechnik.
Designed and installed by Southby Productions, the system features 143 loudspeakers covering the 40m wide performance stage and is – to date – the highest-resolution d&b Soundscape system installed anywhere in the world.
The system includes 17 d&b Y10P point source speakers, along with 18 44S cabinets as front-fills, covering the main stage. The Y10Ps are at 2.35m intervals along the stage’s full width, making this the highest-resolution Soundscape system yet. Its two 360˚ surround fields include 22 T10 cabinets and three 4S speakers, along with a series of T10 and 44S delays. The sub array consists of 10 V-SUBs, plus four SL-SUBs (in INFRA mode) in the centre of the array. Two DS100 processors provide the power of the d&b Soundscape system.
The master control is QLab, and the show file contains over 900 cues. Atlas also receives tracking data from TiMax and then sends the necessary OSC commands to the d&b DS100s to control object positioning, En-Space reverb sends, and other settings.
Having been impressing audiences with its shows for 45 years, Thursford takes great pride in its high production standards – and for 2023, it was time for a sound system upgrade. Sound designer Mark Rogers explained: “Because our room is very wide and not very high, we’ve never been able to use line arrays, so we had a distributed point source system with over 50 boxes. This meant that pretty much every audience member heard most of their sound from the speaker nearest them.”
As the shows increased in complexity, the challenge of balancing sound became more of a compromise, with some elements sacrificed in favour of others. Nor did the system allow for any concept of sound localisation – a failure exacerbated by the stage’s extreme width. Rogers recalled: “When a sound began, we could see audience members trying to work out where the thing was, and in those few seconds, the performance had lost their attention.”
Rogers, who had long been aware of d&b Soundscape, partly through working alongside sound designer Sebastian Frost, an early pioneer of the system, recalled a discussion with colleagues after working closely with Southby Productions and d&b Soundscape on an opera season: “We asked, ‘How could we ever go back to mono after this?’”
Returning to Thursford, he talked up immersive sound, hoping it would one day solve their limitations. Fortunately, the venue’s owners, the Cushing family, are firm believers that only the best is good enough. They soon gave the go-ahead for an upgrade, and the Southby team presented an on-site demonstration. “It didn’t take long to convince everyone that Soundscape was the way forward!” added Rogers.
