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MillimeterCOVERING IT ALL
Apr 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Joyce Jorgenson
A theatre in the round, Marriott's Lincolnshire Theatre required special attention to deliver sufficient intelligibility and SPL to every seat in the house.
Located within a sprawling 168 acre (67 hectare) resort complex, Marriott's Lincolnshire Theatre brings well over 400,000 people to the Chicago suburb of Lincolnshire each year. Once known as Drury Lane Theatre North, the facility plays host to a seemingly endless string of world-class musicals staged within the framework of a nonstop production schedule featuring back-to-back matinees and evening shows.
With little dark time available to perform maintenance and make improvements to the theatre's technical infrastructure, the concept of installing a new audio system within this room has the distinct potential of being equated with famous train wrecks and other cataclysmic events. Fully realizing this himself, when the time came to undertake just such a project, the Marriott Lincolnshire's resident sound designer David Lewis called upon someone who perceives such tasks as merely all in a day's work, sound designer Duncan Edwards.
Edwards was singled out for the job because of his vast experience in theatrical sound design for Broadway and off-Broadway productions, touring and regional theatrical productions, musical theatre and plays. As a New York-based sound designer, his primary focus has been in theatrical venues, although over the past 20 years, his design and engineering talents have contributed to projects ranging from 50-seat theatres to 100,000-seat stadiums.
The outer main ring consists of 11 identical clusters, each using a UPA-1P on top and a horizontally mounted UPM-1P underneath. The UPA-1Ps cover the middle and back rows of each seating section with the broader pattern of the UPM-1Ps providing coverage for most front rows. An inner ring of five UPM-1P cabinets supplements the first two rows and also serves as a monitor system for the performers on stage. To augment deep bass response, USW-1P subwoofers are flown above the outer clusters on three sides of the stage.
As fate would have it, in addition to being asked to help upgrade the Marriott Lincolnshire's house sound, Edwards was also chosen to serve as the sound designer for the theatre's production of "Phantom of the Country Palace," a show by Morey Yeston (the composer/lyricist behind Broadway's "Titanic" and "Grand Hotel"), which was scheduled to open on October 27, 1999.
With Edwards pulling double-duty as both house installation consultant/system designer and sound designer for "Phantom," it logically followed that he would be able to integrate the two positions. One of the benefits of this arrangement was that he was able to stay with the theatre for a length of time, which allowed him to fine tune the system under actual technical rehearsal and show conditions.
Working directly with David Lewis on the project, Edwards came face-to-face with a daunting schedule providing less than three days between the closing of one show and the opening of "Phantom," during which time the new audio system had to be installed and up-and-running.
"Theatre management wanted a reliable system that would provide high-quality sound with maximum impact," Edwards said of the guiding philosophy behind his and Lewis' fast-track efforts. "This being the case, one of our main objectives was to produce a design that would provide uniform coverage throughout the house, while clearly maintaining the perception that all sound remained true to its source onstage."
Employing an in-the-round configuration, the Marriott Lincolnshire has room for 882 people within just nine rows of seating. Each fan-shaped seating section starts with 11 seats in the front row. By the seventh row, each is 38 seats wide. The first section is unique in that it includes a glass-enclosed, acoustically treated orchestra booth taking up the last three rows. Sections two, three and four are identical. Edwards and Lewis ultimately penned a multi-cluster design for the room using self-powered modular components from Meyer Sound Labs.
"One must really think of the system as having eleven identical clusters, each composed of one Meyer Sound UPA-1P at the top and one Meyer Sound UPM-1P on the bottom," Edwards said. "All of these clusters are symmetrically spaced around the perimeter of a ceiling-mounted grid. The clusters derive their signal from a single matrix output. Above the section two, three, and four clusters is a USW-1P subwoofer also from Meyer Sound which receives its signal from an auxiliary send. An inner ring of UPM-1Ps provides fill for the first two rows of seating. Fed by an additional matrix output, this inner ring also provides the initial source for system delay, and allows performers to hear their own vocals.
"For this theatre, we didn't want to design a high-Q, point source system. Instead, we went for low-Q devices distributed in a line array designed to deliver a coherent pillow of sound emanating from the stage. Because the distance from the grid to the back row of seats is only 25 feet (7.6 m), and the seating fans out very quickly, we needed to choose loudspeakers that have a smooth, even and wide horizontal dispersion pattern. In addition to its favorable horizontal coverage pattern, I like the UPA-1P in this space - or just about any theatre environment - because of its clean, transparent sound. Given the steep vertical coverage requirements of this room, I had to extend the vertical pattern of each UPA-1P with a UPM-1P. The under-hung UPM-1Ps are roughly 10 feet (3 m) from the nearest seat. Their coverage pattern was perfect for the distance."
Each UPA-1P operates from 60 Hz to 16 kHz and covers 100 degrees horizontally by 45 degree vertically. They are biamplified and consist of a single 12 inch (305 mm) cone driver and a single 3 inch (76 mm) compression driver. Smaller in stature, the UMP-1P operates from 60 Hz to 22 kHz and leaves a 100 degree 100 degree footprint. It employs a biamplified, three-way design with dual 5 inch (127 mm) conical transducers and a 1 inch (25.4 mm) titanium dome high-frequency driver. The USW-1P subwoofers operate between 32 Hz and 180 Hz. Outfitted with a pair of 15 inch (381 mm) drivers and a two-channel amp, these low-end devices disperse sound in a pattern measuring 360 degrees horizontally by 180 degrees vertically. Meyer Sound's SIM System II was used to tune the system.
"Although there are other measurement products available, none, to my knowledge, is three-channel, and none is a turnkey system specifically designed for working with complex, multi-channel, multi-zone loudspeaker systems," Edwards said. "I used the SIM system to make frequency response, phase and dB SPL measurements throughout the room. I also verified the frequency response, phase,distortion, and gain structure of all the electronic components."
Once the electronics had been verified, Edwards placed measurement mics in the field of coverage and checked the loudspeakers for phase and level to ensure that each cabinet was performing the same relative to the others. With these preliminary checks completed, he repositioned the measurement mics within the individual zones and began to work with the loudspeakers cabinet by cabinet to build the sound throughout the room.
The EQ, level and delay sections of four XTA Electronics DP200 audio processors were used for controlling the system. After all of the individual loudspeakers were equalized, Edwards examined the effects of combining loudspeakers and carefully used additional equalization, relative delay and relative level to smooth out the frequency and phase response of the combined components using pink noise and music. Edwards likes to start with pink noise and then add music because it is his feeling that systems act differently with transients than within a steady state of pink noise. He also listened to the system using a hand-held mic and a head-mounted lavalier mic while checking for resonance frequencies in the room. Based upon these tests, he took further action to minimize any problems when possible. The delay timing of the entire system was set to synchronize with a performer just past center stage.
A turnkey system running proprietary software on a DOS operating system, the SIM System II consists of a rack-mounted PC with three measurement DSP cards, and an external 2 RU, eight-channel switcher that allows for three measurement points per channel. Typically, the points are the input and output on an EQ and a measurement mic. The switcher allows for easy comparison of the signal before the EQ, after the EQ, and at a measurement mic position in front of the loudspeaker arrays.
According to Edwards, the three days he and the rest of the installation team had to complete the system went like this: "On the Sunday after the close of the first show, we took down the existing loudspeaker arrays. Then, on Monday, we came in and hung the new arrays. With the help of a crew from TC Furlong, all the terminations were made. TC Furlong is a Meyer Sound dealer from nearby Lake Forest, IL, and the equipment provider for all of the new components. Tuesday morning, we verified the system and made preliminary adjustments to prepare for afternoon cast rehearsals. Wednesday morning, again with the help of TC Furlong, we performed extensive system tuning prior to the orchestra dress rehearsal that afternoon. The first public performance was that evening. On Thursday, I performed a few more tweaks, and that was it. On this job, we had to be extra creative with the design to meet high expectations and still have everything up and running in a very short amount of time. These kinds of parameters aren't necessarily complementary, but that's what made it all quite interesting at times."
If the comments of the Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre's Executive Director Cary Walker are any indication, the project can certainly be deemed a success.
"I can't believe I've had to work here for 17 years before hearing shows like this," he said. "The opening of `Phantom of the Country Palace' was spectacular. I give Duncan's sound design the credit. This was a very complex space to work with, because it was never intended for musical theatre. He changed all that, and with blinding speed I might add."
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
