Lakewood Church Media Center Equipped With AudioTile
Feb 16, 2006 8:00 AM
Following its successful launch at AES in New York City, AudioTile was recently installed in the new media center at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. AudioTile, designed by Russ Berger for Auralex Acoustics, provides an attractive means of blending absorption, diffusion, and reflection for optimum acoustical balance. The patent-pending AudioTile is one of the first offerings in the new pArtScience product line from Auralex, a family of acoustical treatments designed for exceptional performance with a custom look, all at an affordable price.
AudioTile ShockWave was selected for the primary recording studio in the new 10,000 square-foot facility. “The treatment was laid out with heavier coverage near the floor, gradually tapering off to very little coverage closer to the ceiling,” says Brian Wheat, product marketing manager for Auralex Acoustics. “By doing this, we accomplished several major goals: providing the room with good low-frequency control with thicker treatments near the floor/wall corners, creating a very tight sound in areas where drums or amplifiers might be placed, and simultaneously offering a nice reverberant sound in upper areas where overhead and/or ambient room microphones would be placed.”
As the ShockWave components are spread out, broadband absorption is maximized and the areas of exposed hard surface provide high-frequency scattering. This gives the room a natural-sounding ambience while at the same time controlling undesirable acoustical anomalies. Among the many advantages of AudioTile is that it offers broadband absorption, and depending on how it is patterned, it tends toward diffusion as more of the wall surface is exposed. It also gives excellent low-frequency absorption, particularly in corner applications that capture a greater depth of air space, as in the Lakewood studio.
“We pre-built the pattern laying it out on the floor, which made it simple to transfer it directly up on to the wall,” comments Berger, president of Russ Berger Design Group (RBDG). “That’s the cool thing about the AudioTile—you’ve got all this design flexibility, but it’s easy to install, and it’s easy to make it look great.”
Lakewood’s media center, designed by RBDG, is located on the fifth floor of a newly constructed building adjacent to the church’s 16,000-seat sanctuary. The facility includes three audio suites, eight edit suites, a graphic suite, and production control rooms for broadcast video and audio. The audio suites are used during postproduction and recording of choirs, rhythm tracks, and soloists. Lakewood’s weekly television program is seen in nearly 20 million households in the United States and receives major network coverage in Canada, Australia, and throughout Europe.
For more information, visit www.auralex.com/.
