Those seeking subtlety should drive right through the 702 area code and head east another 1,200 miles or so until the Topeka town limits are in sight. Then again, those looking to be dazzled should pull right up in front of The Mirage and wait for the newly reworked volcano feature to fire.
The volcano outside of The Mirage has been a Las Vegas landmark ever since the hotel opened its doors in 1989. In 1996, the technology of the volcano was updated, but the audio system remained unchanged until last year when a complete overhaul was undertaken under the guidance of WET Design, Acoustic Dimensions and Technology West Group.
The latest improvements include redesigned pyrotechnics pilot and igniter systems and 150 new burners, all engineered by WET Design, and an audio system that features 25 boxes of Meyer Sound MILO line arrays, a number of 700-HP subwoofers, MSL-4 and UPQ-1P boxes, not to mention a Matrix3 system that spreads the tracks across the attraction’s three-acre lagoon.
In addition to hardware and software, the attraction features a soundtrack composed by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and renowned percussionist Zakir Hussain. The Hart/Hussain piece includes over 70 tracks with voices and effects ranging from monk chants to tinker bells.
“I was surprised about how enthusiastic he was when we first got to working on it,” remarks Jim Doyle, WET Design’s director of technical resources. “Two days after we met, I had a test track, and we hadn’t even talked about a contract. He was sitting in his studio building tracks. He put hundreds of hours into this thing. It was so far beyond what I expected. He and Zakir took it to movie soundtrack level.”
Where the Mirage’s volcano was once just another sight to see on the Las Vegas strip, now it’s a major attraction that stops passersby in their tracks. The attraction itself includes the volcano and other islands with natural vegetation in the resort’s three-acre lagoon.
The design of the audio system, which needed to be heard up and down Las Vegas Boulevard as well as in front of The Mirage, became the responsibility of Ryan Knox, a consultant at the Dallas office of Acoustic Dimensions. The first challenge, Knox reports, was to determine what direction they wanted to go. “We needed to find out if they wanted a point source system where the audio came right from the volcano or if they wanted something that was more distributed.”
Ultimately, the team decided to go with a system that was more immersive, featuring nine sources that covered the entire area. “The system also allowed the sound designer and composer a tremendous amount of depth to work with and a lot of tools to use,” Knox says. “We wanted to come up with something that was more of an experience and more like a show.”
In addition to the huge sound field, Knox was faced with designing a system for an audience that wouldn’t be stationary. “We knew that, so the system is composed in a way that you get a slightly different experience, depending where you are,” he says. “We liked that, because then people might keep coming back.”
While the system was designed to carry, Knox and Brad Cornish from Technology West Group report that they had to be careful with how far sound went. “There is no ordinance in place on how loud the signals can be,” Cornish says, “but I think we needed to be neighborly and respect the casinos on either side of The Mirage.”
The placement of the nine arrays varied depending on the coverage required, and was also determined by the location of the primary audiences as well as the desired length of throw. While most placements included a MILO box and a 700-HP subwoofer, a number also include either a MSL-4 or a UPQ-1P box to increase the coverage.
The signal was delivered to the boxes via waterproof fiber optic cables and connected with Meyer’s VEAM connection system. “At each location, we had an electrical box that had a panel mount VEAM connector on it,” Cornish explains. “So if something happened to the field cabling, somebody could just walk out and replace the male to female VEEM cable. That would fix the power, signal and the RMS (remote monitoring system).”
The signal that was sent to the south island went right into a pair of Galileo boxes that converted the feed into analog audio, Cornish adds.
Before the boxes were installed, each was painted green to match the foliage on the islands. One of the unanticipated challenges that the install team faced was the threat of tree diseases being transferred from one island to another. “There was a substantial and expensive amount of vegetation already in place on each of the islands,” Cornish reports, “and we had to manage the trenching on each island carefully, because we didn’t want to transfer any possible diseases between trees. So if we used a shovel on one island, we had to disinfect it or use a different one before moving on to another island.”
In addition to adding new hang points across the volcano’s structure, the control room that’s located in the base of the volcano was completely refitted. The team from Technology West Group installed a Matrix3 audio show control system that syncs with the timecode output by the system designed by WET Design.
The Matrix3 system came in handy on a number of fronts, Cornish reports. “Bill Mansfield and Barry Mim did the custom programming on the Matrix3 system so that Mickey’s tracks would sweep over the nine separate arrays,” he says. Mansfield and Mim are also two of the main brains behind the audio portions of such Cirque du Soleil productions as O and Zumanity. “The playback is handled through the Wild Tracks program in the Matrix3 system.”
Other than the pyro controller and a couple of computers and screens, the control room is has been stripped of all sorts of amplifiers and power distribution boxes. That adjustment had an auxiliary benefit to the install team — the removal of cooling and power from the room itself.
A couple of days before the show went live, all members of the team, including Hart, arrived on site to do the final tunings. One of the issues they had to work with was the microclimate that’s created by three acres of water being placed in the middle of the desert, heated up by 4-to-60-foot-tall pyro effects being fired.
“The humidity and temperature changes between the show and the actual viewing areas is substantial,” Cornish reports. “We had to take that into account when it came to tuning and tweaking the system.”
Turns out the installation of the Galileo boxes fixed that issue with ease, says Knox. The bigger challenge for him during those final days was the crowds that would seemingly appear out of nowhere once the system was fired up. “I’m not used to having 400 to 500 people watch me while I work,” he says with a laugh. “Everything else was pretty standard, but all those people in the way and having to answer all their questions, made it a bit harder.”
