Two Princess Cruises ships – Diamond Princess and Sun Princess – have undergone a major upgrade to their entertainment offerings with a new approach to live sound, bringing L-ISA Hyperreal Sound and Immersive Hyperreal Sound experiences to their guests. [related]
Princess Cruises decided to raise the on-board sound reinforcement to a new standard and has specified L-Acoustics L-ISA configurations, supplied by L-Acoustics Certified Provider, Norwest Productions.
L-ISA is an object-based immersive sound technology that uses placement of sound sources to achieve spatialization, enabling anything from a customizable, ultra-realistic live sound field to fully immersive 360° sound design.
Individual audio objects or channels can be independently panned and located anywhere in the soundscape.
The main components are the loudspeaker system, the L-ISA Processor, and L-ISA Controller: a software suite that takes care of positioning, movement and visualization of all sound objects in the 3D mixing space in real time.
In seeking to offer exceptional guest experiences, Princess Cruises’ Entertainment Experience department began exploring implementation of immersive live sound, noting that live performance audiences are increasingly exposed to immersive technologies at the movies, in gaming and VR.
“Bringing a new level of guest experience is our foremost consideration,” said Mark Simons, Princess Cruises director of production operation and projects.
The company felt the L-ISA technology could make listeners feel like they were in the heart of the action happening on stage and decided to move forwarded at InfoComm 2018.
Inside the Princess Cruises Upgrades
The frontal Scene systems for both installations use five arrays of six Kiva II ultra-compact modular line source speakers across the width of the stage. These are augmented with ARCS WiFo cabinets to widen the panorama with an extension system, along with two SB18 subwoofers.
The Diamond Princess installation takes the system even further into the immersive realm with 12 X8 enclosures to create the surround system. The Sun Princess system was installed in August 2018 and the Diamond Princess installation happened at the beginning of 2019.
The new systems, which made Princess Cruises the first line to adopt the L-ISA technology, encapsulate the audience in audio.
