Audio... Music, ambient, localized or all?

[TroyO]

How are most folks setting up sound at thier haunt?

Not so much technilogically as spatially.... do you have a "Master ambience" track and then props with additional noises that just play right there at the prop? That would seem the most dramatic, I suppose.

Or, do you loop tracks at the prope and let the "Ambience" just come from that? That would be the most "realistic" where each noise has a specific source.

If it's a triggered prop it would probably only play sounds when it was active, which i always found a little strange... you mean spiders don't chitter when I'm not nearby?

Side question, somewhat on the technical side... do most folks disable the crppy built in sounds on most commercial props? My guess is that the easy way to do that is to cut the speaker wires?

Finally... what about a music track? Do you have theme songs, LOL?

Mostly I'm just curiuos what other have done and found especially effective, or what they have tried and then said "Ehhh, lets not do that next year..."

[hedg12]

I have an ambient sound effects track (different every year - this year it's jungle sounds) that plays on a 5 speaker surround system. It's a stereo track, so the surround receiver can synthesize a surround track - works very well for ambient background. This year I'm using another receiver for my main prop audio - left and right channels placed at each of the main props for dialogue. And finally I have another system set up just for a thunder track.

[stagehand1975]

I send a master thunder track through an fm transmitter. Each area has its own ambient track that is mixed with the thunder track. Only 2 of my props make noise. This year one prop scare will be just a sensor activated visual effect. Trip the sensor and there is a loud crack of thunder and a very high power strobe light will go off.

Sending thesame thunder all over through all different sized speakers, some equilized differently give huge presence of surround sound. I have actually had someone look up and think was really a storm coming.

[MansionHaunter]

In a perfect world, I'd have both. Some "all over" sounds/music to cast a generalized creepiness to the haunt, plus individual, local sound effects for each prop: tombstones, coffins, skeletons, other dynamic or static items woudl each have their own sound loop.

As for the cheesy speakers in some props, I made a modification to one that i think worked out great. I have this seven foot tall "butler" that was given to me by a family member, and though his voice is pretty cool, it was so badly reproduced by the little 2.5 inch speaker built in that I had to do something. I removed the speaker and wired up a couple of four-inch speakers back to back, and set them inside some ABS pipe of various sizes, such that I made an acoustic waveguide. This gave the butler the kind of deep, resonant vocal intonations I would expect from someone who's seven feet tall.

So I'd recommend seeing if you can use pipes and resonant chambers to enrich and direct the sound better than whatever they have built in.