Meyer Sound Laboratories, Inc.
Berkeley, CA 94702
United States
This summer festival season, Meyer Sound's Constellation acoustic system is used for three concert series in Colorado, California and South Korea. Constellation allows these venues to optimize their room acoustics for orchestral, chamber, or choral performances with the press of a button.
In June, Colorado College Summer Music Festival in Colorado Springs featured two Festival Orchestra Concerts in the intimate 450-seat Celeste Theater of the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center. A permanent Constellation system provided an ideal performance environment for the orchestral programs.
"The concert hall itself is a joy to perform in," says Scott Yoo, the festival's music director and principal conductor. "I have recommended the acoustic enhancement system to other performing arts centers after the great results that I have experienced at Cornerstone."
For Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, Calif., Constellation offers its flexible acoustic enhancements to two of the venues for this multi-site festival: the 450-seat Cuesta College Performing Arts Center and the the 1,289-seat Sidney Harman Hall at the Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center at California Polytechnic State University.
"Before Constellation, it was often difficult for lower voiced strings to hear upper voiced strings, for the winds to hear other instruments, and for the conductor to hear much of anything," observes Bettina Swigger, executive director of Festival Mozaic. "But when I was on stage with the orchestra during a demonstration of Constellation, the difference was remarkable. Constellation is one of the reasons we're back at the Cohan Center after a two-year absence."
The Great Mountains Music Festival celebrates its tenth season at the Alpensia Resort in Pyeongchang, South Korea, under the musical direction of the acclaimed sister duo of cellist Myung-Wha Chung, and violinist Kyung Wha-Chung. A Constellation system was installed at the Alpensia Concert Hall to augment the dry 1.5-second reverberation time with early reflections and late reverberations that can be adjusted as needed for specific performances.
After experiencing Constellation at Great Mountains for the first time, festival orchestra clarinetist Evan Solomon says, "There was more reverberation, making it more comfortable to perform on stage. It was a natural reverberation, not artificial, so I was very happy with the improvement."
The Constellation acoustic system encompasses a complete suite of hardware and software tools, along with design services and meticulous final room tuning. The variable room acoustics are created using a large number of distributed ambient sensing microphones, Meyer Sound's D-Mitri digital audio platform for signal processing using the patented VRAS algorithm, and numerous small Meyer Sound self-powered loudspeakers which are precisely positioned both overhead and around the perimeter of the hall.
Constellation at Cornerstone was specified by D.L. Adams Associates and installed byCEAVCO Audio Visual, while the system at Cuesta College PAC was specified by Purcell-Noppe Associates and installed by AVI-SPL, and the system at the Christopher Cohan Center was specified by Sonitus and installed by Pro Sound & Video. Constellation at the Alpensia Concert Hall was coordinated by CTO Eugine Yune and installed by Incova Ltd.
