The Lightning Room is a 27-channel interactive installation in The Real Unreal (Meow Wolf).
This project was led by Meason Wiley; the room itself tells the story of a time bending event that alters the state of a creature who only lives in liminal states. My contributions were in designing a 27-channel speaker system to spatialize sound events and generate the atmosphere in the room. I also collaborated with Meason Wiley in designing the sounds for the room.
The system is made up of 5 overhead speakers, 2 subwoofers, 16 satellite speakers, and 4 bass shakers. The system was designed to determine if high fidelity spatialization could be achieved with a mixed fidelity system.
When working with spatial systems it is easier to spatialize sounds when those sounds have transients or contain higher frequencies. Smaller speakers inherently have less fidelity but can produce higher frequencies accurately. In this system 16 smaller satellite speaker were placed on the perimeter of the room and reliably spatialize sounds while the 5 overhead speakers fill in the lack of fidelity that is inherent in the satellite speakers.
The system successfully proved that high density spatialization can be achieved by utilizing a large number of smaller and less expensive speakers. The spectral fidelity of the generated sounds is preserved by having a lesser number of high fidelity speakers and the "spatial fidelity" is preserved by having a higher number of smaller speakers.
The YouTube video shows the Max/MSP patch written for the space and illustrates how the system locates sound in the space while responding to the various room states.
