Lynchburg, VA (April 27, 2017)—Liberty University’s School of Music has a new, unique venue for orchestral and choral music inside its 141,000-square-foot Center for Music and Worship Arts. The facility sports adjustable architectural acoustics, which work in conjunction with a Meyer Sound’s Constellation active acoustic system.
The hall is not only used for a variety of music styles and events, but also schools within the university, all of which have different needs that have to be met by the space. David Greenberg of Creative Acoustics (Westport, CT) designed the space, and aimed to make the most of having two adjustable systems working to complement each other.
“A Holy Grail of acoustics is being able to precisely adjust the second order decay,” he said. “The reverberation gets out of the way so that the sounds you want to be clear and distinct are not covered up. Here, you can have the physical acoustic providing initial reverb decay, that dies off, and then you have the active acoustic continuing beyond that in a totally controllable fashion.”
The physical acoustics of the hall are altered using motorized drapes and vertical banners selectively covering wall areas behind the stage and around the perimeter of the auditorium.
The Constellation active component comprises 48 miniature microphones spaced around the hall for sensing ambient acoustics, together sending signals to a D-Mitri digital audio platform that includes four dedicated processors (one for each reverberation zone) that host VRAS acoustical algorithms. The resulting acoustical characteristics are created in the space by 303 compact loudspeakers and 18 compact subwoofers, also distributed throughout the hall to emulate the reverberant effect of reflective surfaces.
When direct amplification is required, the hall offers a house system based around a Meyer Sound Leopard compact linear line array system. Supporting the dual arrays of 15-each Leopard loudspeakers are two cardioid arrays of five-each 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements, four Leopard for center fill, two UPQ-2P loudspeakers for outfill, 14 MM-4XP self-powered loudspeakers for front fill, and 10 UP-4XP loudspeakers for upper balcony fill. Four Mina line array loudspeakers and four UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers are available for choir loft and stage fill.
