Theatre sound, although sharing many similarities with other kinds of audio installations, is a distinct beast with many challenges, the most pertinent challenge is coverage of the listening area.

In a theatre’s case, there may be any number of alcoves, balconies and floor spaces to cover, thus often making a simple stack-per-side system out of the question and calling for something a little more complicated. After all, everybody who buys a ticket deserves to hear the programme no matter where they may sit.
Being a mix engineer myself, I am used to walking into a theatre gig and having to deal with multiple delay enclosures, matrix sends, and individual manipulation of the coverage areas but I must admit my knowledge of the minutia of installations of permanent systems was never significant. I’d simply never done one, nor had I ever witnessed one done properly.

You can imagine my interest when I was given instruction by the powers that be to review the new L-Acoustics system that was recently installed into the Barnyard Theatre by Richard Smith and Joseph Mandy of Sound Harmonics. These gentlemen were kind enough to meet me early in the morning to check out their latest installation and Richard was gracious enough to share his thoughts behind the design.

“The Barnyard Theatre is a discerning business just like any other so obviously the budget wasn’t on the order of a blank cheque. The theatre already had an older MTD system so instead of buying an entirely new system, we merely added on some newer components from the latest L-Acoustics line to fill out the room.’

The new components Richard refers to includes four new coaxial 8XTi’s, the LA4 amplified DSP unit, and a couple of SB18 subwoofers. These, added to four MTD115A’s (mains), four MTD108A (front & side fills) and two SB118 Subs, really helped Richard to attain an even coverage to all areas of the theatre.

His main goal was to steer clear of adding fills on the front of the stage and under the balcony areas for the simple reason that it presents a delay nightmare, and an additional cost (of enclosures and processing). In the case of front fills, it was extremely difficult to get the delays right, because the front tables are so close to the stage. For this reason he chose to fly all the boxes and implement clever use of enclosure orientation and firing angles to achieve the even coverage he was aiming for.

Using L-Acoustics’ proprietary system installation software called Soundvision; Richard carefully plugged the venue dimensions into their respective fields and designed a virtual space that reflected the theatre. Soundvision naturally has all L-Acoustics speaker models – including legacy – built into its interface so it’s merely a matter of choosing one and specifying its position. Each speaker model naturally has its own dispersion characteristics and this is built into the software to ensure proper coverage of the virtual space.

A coverage map can then be generated to display the dispersion of the system and all parameters such as type of speaker, angle and position can then be manipulated to supply an optimum configuration. It’s a wonderful tool that Richard uses on all his installations and it really shows once you take a listen.

Taking a walk around the room, I was surprised to hear how even the playback material sounded at all points in the room. The biggest problem areas in this type of venue are often underneath the balcony and the area directly under the stage, because the Barnyard has a balcony that runs around the entire perimeter of the venue and because the floor is actually quite large, it’s clear that these issues were immediately a concern for Richard. But he handled the situation beautifully as I was able to hear the music clearly no matter where I was in the room, without any phase seams or tonal change.

Sound Harmonics really did a great job with this venue and their approach is a testament to taking what you have, carefully using the tools at your disposal and getting the job done with the least amount of expenditure and intrusion.

by Greg Bester