Formed in Dalian in 1999, Wang Wen has spent over two decades building one of China’s most distinctive voices in instrumental rock. Their densely layered, atmospheric music earned them Best Rock Artist and Best Instrumental Album at the 15th Chinese Music Media Awards in 2015, and Best Live Act (Indie) at the LPA Independent Music Awards in 2020.
In April 2025, the band reached a new milestone: the full theatre premiere of The Light, an immersive audio-visual work three years in the making, staged at Xi’an Grand Theatre in L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound deployed by L-Acoustics certified partner Racpro.
Located in central Xi’an, one of China’s most ancient cities and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, Xi’an Grand Theatre is a tiered auditorium that combines architectural grandeur with refined acoustic design. It is currently the only theatre in China equipped with an L-ISA immersive system at a scale capable of meeting the SPL requirements of rock performance, a combination that made it the perfect home for The Light.
The seeds of The Light were sown in 2022, when the band returned to Shijiazhuang, the same city where they had recorded their debut album two decades earlier, to record their album Xinchou | Renyin. During the sessions, conversations about those early recordings sparked the idea of revisiting and rerecording that early work. Later that same year, on tour in Guangzhou, the technical team took the band to experience an immersive sound system first-hand. The fit with Wang Wen’s atmospheric music was immediately apparent.
The following summer, rather than simply rerecording old songs, the band took the opening track from their debut album 28 Days Insomnia Diary and expanded it into a 50-minute, four-chapter work covering Grass, Wood, Light, and Shade, with improvised passages woven throughout. The band recorded their parts in Shijiazhuang in September 2023; a full string orchestra was added in Beijing a year later. The Light from was conceived, recorded, and mixed in immersive audio from the outset.
The work received its live premiere with the Yao Bi Gan String Orchestra at Can Festival, where the production was presented using L-ISA Hyperreal immersive sound in an outdoor environment. The performance proved both the artistic impact and technical potential of immersive audio for Wang Wen’s music, demonstrating that L-ISA could translate the emotional depth and cinematic scale of the work beyond traditional stereo. At the same time, the festival experience clarified what the full vision ultimately required: a tiered theatre, a formal listening environment, and a permanent immersive system of sufficient scale and precision. That realisation led Wang Wen to Racpro and, through them, to Xi’an Grand Theatre.
Li Feng, branding manager at Racpro, said: “We kept envisioning our ideal performance space: a theatre with tiered seating. We wanted it to feel solemn and dignified, but comfortable. More importantly, it required an immersive sound system and coverage capable of meeting the SPL demands of an amplified band performance. At first, this seemed nearly impossible — until we met the Racpro team, who introduced us to Xi’an Grand Theatre.”
Sound designer and FOH engineer Deng Chenglong was central to shaping how The Light would translate from studio to stage. He explained: “I see The Light as another bold exploration in Wang Wen’s musical journey. In their previous work, whether in melody, harmony or sound, everything was built upon the foundation of stereo. But this time, the creative core has shifted to panoramic sound, which fundamentally changes the underlying logic of expression.”
Because the piece was crafted in immersive audio from its very inception, the sound design could be built from the ground up around the three-dimensional space it would eventually inhabit. Chenglong added: “With L-ISA, we can break free from the constraints of traditional left-right stereo, sculpting every phrase, every melody, and every ambient sound within a three-dimensional space, and creating a soundscape that seamlessly integrates with, or even transcends, the visual narrative on stage.”
For Chenglong, system and venue were inseparable choices. The Light demanded an environment capable of faithfully reproducing its spatial dynamics, layering and localisation. He explained: “It’s much like how the best experience of an IMAX film can only be had in an IMAX theatre. The immersive sound system can most faithfully reproduce the spatial dynamics, sonic layers, and precise localisation meticulously crafted within The Light. The unique architectural acoustics of Xi’an Grand Theatre meet those technical requirements, while the ceremony that such a venue carries with it is an indispensable part of the experience.”
The L-ISA configuration at Xi’an Grand Theatre centres on the immersive field that makes the venue uniquely suited to a work like The Light. The scene array is built around five hangs of 10 Kara II, with two further hangs of 10 Kara II providing extension. Two hangs of four KS28 deliver the subwoofer foundation needed to support Wang Wen’s live performance levels, while two hangs of two A10 handle side-fill. A full surround system starts with 34 X8 on the side and back walls of the theatre, 16 X8 overhead, and eight X8 providing under-balcony fill. Together, these 58 X8 create the enveloping three-dimensional sound environment at the heart of the piece’s design, ensuring consistent spatial experience across the full tiered auditorium. Stage lip and orchestra pit fill are provided by 20 5XT.
The theatre premiere at Xi’an Grand Theatre was the culmination of a journey that had begun in a Shijiazhuang rehearsal room and passed through recording studios, festival stages, and three years of careful creative development. The 150-minute performance was divided into two halves. The first was dedicated entirely to The Light, performed alongside the Yao Bi Gan String Orchestra under composer and conductor Song Yang.
The second presented new string arrangements of selected Wang Wen pieces, with several tracks newly arranged specifically for the theatre setting.
Wang Wen also collaborated with visual artist Cheng Ran, whose macro-photography, filmed through microscope lenses, transformed everyday objects into vast, abstract imagery projected on the theatre screen. The technique mirrored the music’s improvisational quality: familiar materials revealed through an unfamiliar scale, much as The Light takes the band’s earliest recorded work and opens it into something that fills a theatre.