The ambition of London’s Imperial War Museum’s First World War Gallery is to give visitors a sense of life in the trenches was like, including building an immersive soundscape. With a resumé that includes projects at the BMW Museum in Munich and the Stategrid Pavilion at the Expo Shanghai 2010, sound designer Ramon De Marco readily understand the requirements.

The technical mission was to find a playback system that would respond to cues from a Medialon Show Controller and interface with video servers from 7th Sense and Dataton. The choice was Merging Technologies’ Ovation.

Idee und Klang came to the project with the proposal from an international competition for the assignment. Several challenges awaited – the first was the limited available space. Although the inclusion of a tank and a biplane makes the exhibit seem large, it is actually very deceptive and loudspeakers needed to be hidden or strategically placed on the ceiling to provide the atmosphere.

The second issue was that sound recording was not very common 100 years ago, so finding authentic sound effects was far from straightforward. Some were adapted from sound libraries but many had to be freshly recorded – the voices could only be done in the UK to have the necessary local accents and nuances. De Marco is used to thinking of design in musical terms, and builds compositions from sound-effects and sound-design elements. Taking this approach makes a scene flow better than random sound effects played in a loop. Idee und Klang normally record and assemble the programme in Pro Tools so – because there was no time to become familiar with Pyramix, which is an integral part of Ovation – the same approach was taken at the IWM. Once a track was finalised it was transferred to Ovation, and the cues and outputs added.

In preparation the exhibit was a building site during the day, so the only way to mix a track and set the right levels was to work overnight when the construction team were off-site. The trench area is the first and the most complex display and needed to be driven by Ovation, but this also had to be blended with other zones that had fewer channels of audio coming directly from the 7th Sense servers. As the visitor moves through the display sections, the appropriate sounds become apparent.

Understandably, any public project has budget constraints and this was no exception. More ambitious plans for interactivity had to be shelved and focus turned to ensuring that sufficient audio quality with reliability, as the system was to work constantly during the museum opening hours. The Ovation Native pack was consistent with the budget, and was able to easily interface with the rest of the components specified by the systems integrator.

‘We were lucky to see a demonstration of Ovation some time ago and it seemed to tick the boxes,’ De Marco summarises. ‘I have now had a chance to look a little deeper into the product, and I think it is perfect for this type of project. It is great not to be limited by the technology, and we are particularly excited to hear that there are plans for a 3D panner that will be perfect for what we need.’

More: www.merging.com