NJPAC was designed for everything but the spoken word; a small, but crucial, adjustment changed that
By: David Barbour
Having opened in 1997, the
New
Jersey Performing Arts Center - or
NJPAC, as it is familiarly known, has
provided a home for a broad array of
arts programming designed to lure
people from all over the state. As this
is being written, upcoming attractions
include a dual concert by Herbie
Hancock and Lang Lang, the modern
dance company Urban Bush Women,
Ravi Shankar, the New Jersey Youth
Theatre production of Sweeney Todd,
Melissa Etheridge, the hip-hop star
Maxwell, and the comedienne
Mo’Nique.
Given the above, plus a list of regular
constituents including the New
Jersey Symphony, New Jersey State
Opera, and Broadway tours, NJPAC is
a true multi-purpose house. Such
buildings are often fine illustrations of
the rule that if you try to please all, you
end up pleasing none—and, as
Mike
Sinclair, of the firm
Audio Incorporated,
notes, there was room for improvement
in the venue’s sound system.
The
New Roselle, New Jersey based
firm
Audio Incorporated, founded
in 1994 by
Sinclair and
Stephen
Tolve, offers a broad array of services,
from equipment rentals to audio system
design to event management and
system integration. The company was
brought in to address a very specific
problem:
“They have a rather large
house that incorporates three balconies and a very, very large upper
fourth balcony, which is a huge distance
from the main stage,” Sinclair notes.
“They were having difficulty - especially at orchestral and opera performances - with having a sound system
available for announcements, discussions,
and things like that.” The
theatre is equipped with a large-scale
sound system; however; Sinclair adds,
“It is rather imposing, and it doesn’t
blend in with the architecture. We were
charged with the responsibility of coming
up with a system that would blend
in with the architecture and would also
get speech up to the very, very back
of the house, which is a very, very long
way away.”
After reviewing the available
options,
Sinclair says,
“We came up
with the idea of using three sections of
[Renkus-Heinz] Iconyx IC24 speakers,
attached to the proscenium arch.”
Designed for any number of applications,
including houses of worship,
transport terminals, stadiums and arenas,
convention centers, and museums,
as well as performing arts centers,
the product offers two distinct
advantages. The long, narrow units fit
into the theatre’s proscenium arch;
they have also been custom-fitted to
blend in with the room’s décor.
“When
we painted them the same color as
the structural steel, they all but disappeared,”
Sinclair adds.
The
Iconyx IC24 features 24 transducers
and 24 amp channels. It offer a frequency range of 120Hz-18kHz
and has a typical throw of 195'. Most
important for this application, it is a
digitally steerable array.
“We’ve taken
advantage of the steering capabilities
of the speakers, directing specific sections
of them to the various sections
of the house,” says
Sinclair. “We can
make nodes out of the bottom sections
that deal with the orchestra, then
the middle section that deal with the
middle three balconies; the top section
goes to the very far balcony. During a
performance, depending on how many
people they have in the house, we can
direct sound at them.”
The system was tested before it
was chosen.
“As part of the design
process, we brought in a demo system
and put a single Iconyx IC24 in
the middle of the stage,” says
Sinclair.
“We listened to that, up to the second
balcony, but we really didn’t have the
ability to hear it up to the fourth balcony,
until we did the installation. Once we had done
it, the client was
absolutely amazed at
how clear it could be
at that distance,
without any delays.”
The latter fact was
especially fortunate,
because, he says,
“There really is no
place in this room to
put any delay speakers
for the upper balconies,
and we
found that we didn’t
need to do it.”
Control of the
loudspeakers is facilitated
by other
aspects of the inhouse
system, says
Sinclair.
“The distribution
of audio from
the house digital
mixing board is in
CobraNet. It’s a BSS
London system. The
inputs to the six cabinets
are individual CobraNet runs; we
can individually address each one of
these cabinets—for equalization and in
terms of beam steering in real time,
during a performance.” The house
console is a Yamaha O1V.
The system has worked out better
than anyone expected,
Sinclair adds:
“They’re using it at graduations from
the police academy and local colleges
and universities; as a component of
those ceremonies, they’re playing
some light music or they may have
bands playing accompaniment.
They’re continually surprised at how
well the music reproduces, bearing in
mind that they were looking for a
speech-only solution. But they’ve
found themselves with a system that
they can use for a good percentage of
their non-musical events.” Thanks to
the addition of the
Iconyx loudspeakers,
New Jersey’s main multi-purpose
arts center is now equipped to handle
an even broader range of needs.
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Copyright Lighting & Sound America, July 2009
www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html 
