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Acoustics By Design Equips Corporate Campus Theater Pt2

Show 166, Part 2

SVC Podcast – Show Notes – Show 166-2

In this edition of the SVC Podcast, SVC Contributing Editor Bennett Liles continues his conversation with Tim Hamilton of Acoustics By Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan about the new campus theater for Acuity Insurance in Sheboygan, Michigan. The 2000-seat circular room is a challenge for sightlines and acoustics with its very steep vertical seating. In Part Two, Tim outlines the sound system and how it was installed and balanced in a very challenging acoustical environment with five seating sections. Danley speakers for the main house and Shure ULXD wireless microphones rounded out the gear.

Listen to Part 1 of this interview

Links of interest:

Download Podcast Here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/nb-svc/public/public/166-2_Acuity_Theater_Acous…

This is the SVC Podcast from Sound & Video Contractor Magazine with Tim Hamilton of Acoustics By Design. Show notes and equipment links for the podcast are on the web site of Sound & Video Contractor Magazine at svconline.com.

The new Acuity Insurance 2000-seat campus theater has a stage in-the-round and very steep vertical sightlines. Acoustics By Design had its work cut out to come up with video and sound systems that would serve this round venue. Tim Hamilton gave us the details on the five-sided video display. He’s back with us today to provide the story on the equally challenging sound system. That’s coming up right now on the SVC Podcast

Tim, thanks for being back with us.

My pleasure.

Acoustics By Design up there in Grand Rapids and we were talking about the new Acuity Insurance campus theater with some very challenging sightlines, a huge five-sided LED display that you put in along with other displays on the walls. It’s in-the-round which is always a big challenge for video and sound. What are the specs on the sound system that you put in for this?

Well, when we started on design we knew that we were going to need a good, solid speaker system. In general in the industry we hate putting stuff into round spaces. Curves and things like that, they reflect sound back to us in funny ways. We really started on that story with the acoustical side of things. Our acoustical engineers here in the office came up with some excellent treatments to get us a nice dead space and then we took that and moved forward with the sound system. We knew that since it was divided into five parts of the room, all the seating sections in five different areas around, and that they wanted to be able to turn on and off, you know, maybe just use one or two sections of the seating in this space. It made sense for us to look at a speaker that would allow us to be able to try and cover individual parts of that. Not only did it have to work from an audio perspective, but it really had to work from an aesthetic perspective as well. Does it look and feel and make sense in the room? We kind of looked around at various speaker options that were out there and we’ve used Danley products in some previous projects as well and love how they sound and how they work and function. This particular project we found a speaker that we liked how the coverage pattern would work for us. It was their SH-69 product. And it fit the power handling that we needed, it had the control characteristics that we were looking for. We knew that it would cover the space very nicely for what we needed because we needed to cover both a balcony and a main floor section. And based on how some of the other system things were configured we wanted to be in a powered speaker. Well, they didn’t make it in a powered speaker. I asked. I said hey, can you guys come up with a powered version of this box for this application? They scratched their heads for a minute and said yeah, we can come up with something to do that. So they built a powered version of the box for us and that let us do two things. It let us integrate kind of a lower and upper speaker and with how the angles of the boxes work it integrates into a nice-looking speaker array. And at the same time it also helped us meet our design criteria to be in a powered box that fit a good price point and had the control characteristics we were looking for. [Timestamp: 3:24]

A very difficult venue not only for acoustics but as you mentioned, for the look of everything, too. So, what are the sources that can be played on the sound system? They have mics but what other playback capability do they have?

There’s wired microphones of course although more and more people in these types of spaces, they rely pretty heavily on wireless. So there’s Shure wireless microphones that are in the space as well. There are numerous sources that come from the video side of the world. They have playback opportunities. In addition to that you’ve got all the options. They actually have a CD player still in the system, but you can play things from MP3 players, from Bluetooth sources. Pretty much anything that you want to play through the system there’s an interface and a capability to be able to make that happen. And their primary use for the space is doing lectures, but they fully intend to do all sorts of stuff. Their first big opening event in the space they had full rock-and-roll band that they barely had enough space on the stage for and rocked the place out with a band/concert performance which was what the system was designed to be able to do. We wanted it to reinforce and do spoken word for lecture stuff, but it also needed to be able to perform and have enough get up and go to be able to make the place rock when they wanted it to rock. [Timestamp: 4:41]

And for this kind of round house, where did you put the sound system control? It would be interesting to figure out where you can set up the mixer and hear everything.

We discussed lots of ways to do that. From a designer perspective I always like to have a sound mix position that’s out kind of in the space in the house to be able to hear and do good, solid audio control and mixing from. Since most of their application here really was more lecture and speech based and we were concerned with the overall look of the space as well, it made sense to go ahead and put the primary control position in a control booth at the back. It’s underneath the balcony at the back of the main seating areas. It’s not as nice as I would like it to be when it’s stuck back there. We even have a secondary location that’s a little more out in the house. It’s a digital mixing console from Allen & Heath. You can take that console, you can bring it out and you can plug it right into a couple of connectors, set up a temporary mix position that lets you be out in the space and hear what’s going on much better. It gives us a little bit of the best of both worlds. I would love to always see an audio control position out in the main space, but the realistic part of it is that some spaces, that’s not as appropriate and this is one of those where it’s going to live in the little tech booth that’s back behind and out of the way a little bit for the aesthetic considerations. And then when they need it for bigger things it can come right out and be a real player in the room. [Timestamp: 6:00]

Okay, and are the speakers flown or are they built into the structure?

So the main speakers in the house are all suspended right above the main LED displays. Because those speakers had to be higher and above the actual displays we had tried to avoid having any delay speakers that would have to be under the balcony areas. But physics gets us at the end of the day and we just couldn’t keep enough of the site lines all the way to the back from the tops of those speakers. So we did have to put in a ring of delay speakers and we looked at a couple of options. At the end of all of that we decided on a relatively low profile speaker from QSC to function as that delay ring fill in the back of the house. And then in the booth for when somebody is actually mixing at the console there’s a pair of Genelec speakers that sit in the booth. They’re balanced to the rest of the system that provide the operator the chance to hear. There’s also a sliding glass window so you can get a little bit of the feel but that’s never the same as listening in the real house actually. [Timestamp: 6:55]

That must have been a real task in setting up and balancing that sound system.

It is. The setup and balance on the whole system was a little challenging and we took some time. I talked closely and worked with Chad over at Danley about how we wanted to go about that and what we thought was going to happen. Essentially there’s a ring of five speakers that cover everything in the balcony and another ring of five speakers below that and they’re all set up into a circle. And you put that many speakers next to each other you’re going to have some interesting things that are going to happen with summing and lobing and all sorts of funny stuff underneath. Even though the speakers are very well-behaved and are designed to be able to project the vast majority of sound forward, there’s still some funny stuff that happens. So we ended up taking the top ring and we used that as the primary speakers, if you will. We tested and figured out what information we had in those not only in the balcony but on the main floor. Once we knew that our frequency response was there we used the speakers on the bottom ring as fill speakers and did some band pass and some filtering on those to let them function almost like a front fill would function so that we weren’t loading the stage area with as much of the low and low-mid frequencies. Then when they go into other settings, if you shut the balcony speakers all off, there’s a separate set of presets that kick in that allow those lower speakers to all be full-range then at that point. [Timestamp: 8:13]

And you gave them a Shure ULXD wireless mic system?

Yeah. The Shure stuff is always rock solid. I has great support. The folks at Shure are always there when you need them. Those systems are solid. They work well. The thing we were really doing on here was we wanted the Dante outputs off of those. Half of the system runs in Dante. We have an Allen & Heath mixing console that has a Dante card to bring things in. We also route those microphones directly into a QSC Q-SYS box. That allows us to have a couple of different modes so you can have an operator that’s there running the console all the time or you can run it as just a single. If you just have one person that’s going to come in and use the microphone it gives us a chance to let them control that just off of a touch panel. So Dante flows into those things really nicely. We then took the Q-LAN outputs of the Q-SYS box and ran those to QSC amplifiers. So we’ve got a minimum of actual connectors that happen and actual copper that happens between all the different devices and then the QSC amps feed all the Danley speakers. [Timestamp: 9:12]

And you rang it all out right from the beginning with a rock music show.

Yeah. Nothing like starting out big. They did a soft opening first which was just some speaking and lecture stuff, but then they did a grand opening with a big old show as well. [Timestamp: 9:24]

I know it was a real project trying to get the acoustics and the aesthetics in line but you did that so what’s up next for Acoustics By Design?

Well, we’ve always got a variety of interesting projects. You hope that all your clients have budgets to work and do really fun things and neat stuff with their technology. I’ve got several performing arts centers. We’ve got a few different museums. We work in projects everywhere from K-12 through higher education and corporate environments as well. So I’ve got a couple of corporate projects. We’re doing campuses that have got a bunch of AV technology and a few other little fun projects that I’d love to talk about, but one of those sad things in our industry is the really fun projects you end up with non-disclosure agreements on a lot of them and you don’t get to talk about them as much until after they’re all done. So you’ll have to keep tuned for what comes next. [Timestamp: 10:10]

Well, after they’re done you have the proof and you know it works.

Indeed.

It’s Tim Hamilton with Acoustics By Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the new campus theater for Acuity Insurance in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Very difficult seating in-the-round venue but if a rock band works, pretty much anything will. Thanks for telling us about it on the SVC Podcast.

Thank you.

Thanks to Tim Hamilton of Acoustics By Design for joining us on the podcast. Show notes and equipment links are on the website of Sound & Video Contractor Magazine at svconline.com. Be right back here with us next week for the SVC Podcast.

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