Because the fan-shaped room has a relatively short throw of 70 feet from the stage to the back wall, and the listening area is quite wide, the speaker arrays were angled inward slightly so most of the listeners would enjoy a satisfying stereo image. After considering several options, an array of 12 SLS LS8800 ribbon systems was selected, based on its capability of sharp vertical pattern cutoffs, wide horizontal coverage, and tonal accuracy.
CHALLENGE: Revamp the audio system of a newly renovated theater to provide good sound quality at every seat, without changing the room or adding acoustical treatments.
SOLUTION: Install a ribbon line array that visually blends in with the room and has a tight enough coverage pattern to minimize reflected energy.
IN THE AGE OF high rises and modern facilities, historic theater renovations are becoming a common occurrence in big cities and small towns around the country. Communities are discovering the historical and cultural value of yesteryear's “multipurpose” facility — the town theater. Built in 1931, the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville, VA, was once the prime place for movies and community events.
The Paramount recently came back to life in December 2004 after a $17 million renovation project. The new mission for the 1,000-seat theater, which had been closed for the past 30 years, was to bring back its artistic, educational, and charitable benefits to the central Virginia region.
“The Paramount really is the crown jewel of the community,” says Gary Green, audio director for the Paramount Theater.
The 2004 renovation included a new audio system, but
several factors led the theater's board of directors to decide that the existing sound system was less than ideal. Green worked with Reid Henion of Stage Sound, a production equipment supplier in nearby Roanoke, VA, to evaluate the need for a new audio system.
Henion and Green both noted that the theater suffered from several minor problems that resulted in poor sound quality. First, the installed audio system wasn't installed in optimal locations, given the current uses of the theater. Due to aesthetic concerns, the LCR system (with a three-box center cluster and large, single boxes on the left and right) had been hung upstage of the proscenium.
“It's a shallow stage, so the downstage action is often far in front of the loudspeakers, making gain before feedback a constant problem,” Henion says.
Secondly, the Paramount Theater's mix position is located well under the balcony.
“The mix engineer can't even see the proscenium, and therefore can't properly hear the main speakers of the existing sound system,” Green says. “Due to the permanent seating arrangement in the room, this mix position couldn't be moved.”
Additionally, the system wasn't “rider-friendly,” a requirement that became more and more important as the theater began to book national touring acts. As a result, Green had to rent a sound system through his sound company, Greensound Audio, for many of the shows in the 2005 season. “We would bring in a ground-stacked PA for the show, which presented its own issues of blocked sightlines and coverage problems,” he adds.
Another factor that made the job of bringing in a system for each event tougher was the difficult load-in area, which is situated on a hill of a busy street, with no loading dock.
“The load-in door is almost 3 feet higher than the stage, so there was constant heavy lifting,” Henion says. “It was clear that having a usable house system would significantly save on labor and rental costs.”
The emerging goal now was to design a permanent system that would provide excellent sound coverage and quality for the space that would meet or exceed the requirements of the national acts that frequent the venue.
Clean Slate
As part of the original renovation, Neil Shade, an acoustical consultant with RJC Designs, designed the theater's acoustics. The resultant space has a reverberation time of less than 2 seconds and a neutral, natural sound that works well for most types of performances, especially amplified events.
However, the install presented a few acoustic challenges. First, the neutrality of the acoustic surfaces didn't apply to the ceiling, which is hard plaster and shaped like a dome.
To avoid the articulation loss that would result from ceiling reflections reaching the balcony seats, Henion felt it was very important to choose a speaker array that wouldn't direct significant energy toward the ceiling. The catch was that the upper balcony seats were only a few feet from the hard plaster molding that led up to the domed center.
“If you look at a section view of the space, there's some asymmetry at the balcony level due to an egress off to one side, and the top row of seating on the taller side is just below the plaster surfaces we needed to avoid,” Henion says. “It was clear that the system would need a dramatic pattern control — especially in the vertical plane — to cover listeners on the top row, yet avoid hitting the plaster just above their heads.”
Also, the fan-shaped room has a relatively short throw of 70 feet from the stage to the back wall, but the listening area is quite wide, making stereo imaging an elusive goal for many listening locations. The decision was made to go with a fairly large installation of a vertical line array with wide horizontal coverage.
The speaker arrays would be angled inward slightly so that most of the listeners would enjoy a satisfying stereo image. To keep from sending excessive energy to the stage from the inward-firing array, the design called for mono front fill speakers to cover the first 15 feet from the stage lip.
After considering several options, Henion felt strongly that one of the ribbon systems from SLS Audio would be the best loudspeaker choice, based on its capability of sharp vertical pattern cutoffs, wide horizontal coverage, and tonal accuracy.
After modeling the room using AutoCAD drawings from the renovation and the manufacturer's proprietary LASSCAD software, Henion determined that an array of 12 SLS LS8800 boxes per side would provide the appropriate mid- and high-frequency coverage.
“The resultant array would follow the familiar articulated ‘J' profile with a slight gap in the middle to prevent excessive high frequency energy from hitting the reflective balcony face,” Henion says. “The arrays were flown fairly low to reach the mixing position under the balcony with full-fidelity coverage. With many line array designs, mid-frequency coverage tends to follow the general direction of the array, while high-frequency coverage is affected more by splay angles. This often means that such systems can be too bright at the extremes of the array's vertical coverage pattern.”
After modeling the room using AutoCAD drawings from the renovation and the manufacturer's propietary LASS-CAD software, an array of 12 SLS LS8800 boxes per side was chosen to provide the appropriate mid- and high-frequency coverage. The new array was merged with several pre-existing components such as four Yorkville TX9S subwoofers and four QSC 1160 loudspeakers used for front fill.
To compensate for this, Henion planned to use simple amplitude shading techniques on the lower array with the bottom three loudspeaker modules attenuated by 2 dB relative to the rest of the array, and then carefully seam the response with that of the front fills. With the top of the array aimed at the balcony, he counted on the warm and well-behaved nature of the room gain to bring the overall system/room response into line with the spectral content of the direct sound on the main floor.
“The boxes are thin and handsome,” Green says. “They blend in perfectly as a permanent install system. The SLS boxes are well-suited to everything from spoken word to jazz or rock, and the system ended up being fairly budget-friendly, too.”
The new array was merged with several pre-existing components such as four Yorkville TX9S sub-woofers and four QSC 1160 loudspeakers used for front fill.
Components for power and processing were also upgraded. Lab.gruppen fp 6400 amplifiers were chosen for their ability to drive low-impedance mid-range loads with accuracy and headroom. Yamaha PC 9501N amplifiers power the ribbon arrays, and were matched to the SLS system based on their high frequency response and cost-effectiveness.
A new BSS Audio FDS-366T Omnidrive digital system processor was added, which also provided digital inputs if the theater decides to upgrade the from the current Soundcraft MH3 mixing console in the future. Finally, a MOXA N-port 5110 Ethernet-to-RS232 adapter for FOH control provides system control from a laptop at the mix position.
“It's generally an audiophile crowd here, and this is the perfect system,” Henion says. “The room sounds fabulous. Paramount Theater now measures ± 3.5 dB or better from 18 feet out to the last seat in the balcony.”
In 2006, the Paramount doubled its season with offerings as diverse as Bo Diddley, George Carlin, and jazz vocalists Diane Schuur and Karrin Allyson.
Linda Seid Frembes is a freelance writer and public relations consultant for the professional AV industry. She can be reached at linda@frembes.com.