A Christmas Carol - Sound System Design (Rozsa Center)
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Here I designed the sound system to be used for Michigan Tech's production of the classic story: A Christmas Carol. The fundamental design is based on vocal reinforcement and intelligibility of the cast. With the help of D&B Audiotechnik's ArrayCalc, I was able to simulate the coverage of my design to determine its effectiveness for the use. Next, I wanted to push the theater experience further into emersion with SFX and reverb sound systems on top of the vocal reinforcement. To do this we used speakers positioned in the catwalks above and around the audience seating, firing into the ceiling to take advantage of the space's natural reverberance. We also had speakers surrounding the audience similar to a 7.1 surround sound system. The main seating had center, center left/right, side left/right, and rear left/right speakers. The most challenging aspect of this project was designing a system before the sound designers knew how they wanted to use it. This meant that I'd have to design for flexibility. The overall system ran great, integrating Q-Lab with Altiverb reverb in Logic, routed through Dante networked audio.
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2023 AES Winter Carnival Statue
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Of all my projects at Michigan Tech, this is my most cherished because of the dedication and drive the Audio Engineering Society demonstrated. The build process began in January, one month before Winter Carnival (February 8th), but the design began in November. For ease of building, the statue is designed off of 8'x4'x4' blocks. These blocks are filled with a mixture of snow and ice (slush) which solidifies in the cold. Stacking these blocks we build the basic shape of the statue. Next, the statue is carved into the final shape and the towers and subs are hollowed out to create the speaker enclosures. Next, the baffles are installed by building them into the statue with hand packed slush. Finally, the drivers are installed into the baffles. This system includes: 2 Electro Voice Model 253 Multicellular Horns powered by Celestion CDX1-1746 compression drivers for highs, 4 Eminence Alpha 8A for high mids, 8 Eminence Delta 15A for low mids, and 6 Eminence Impero 18A subwoofer drivers.
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Current Projects
Rozsa Center Immersive System Proposal
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This is a semester practicum project involving the modeling of potential immersive audio systems for the Michigan Tech Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts. This begins with the modeling of the space in D&B Adiotechnik's acoustic simulation software ArrayCalc, which was manually transferred from a provided pre-existing Sound Vision model. The next step is to add sources and begin coverage simulation. As an immersive system, each source must cover a broad range of the audience with a high density of sources for more accurate surround imaging. Throughout the semester we will simulate similar systems and compare the offerings of various manufacturers. Immersive audio processors are quite expensive, so this project is an exercise in compromise, to how much we can get per our budget.
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Rozsa Center Xilica DSP Upgrade
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This is another semester practicum project with the Rozsa Center, this time involving the integration of new hardware. Our current Audio Architect DSP has begun to show it's age and has become cumbersome to implement immersive programs and virtual acoustics. Additionally, the upcoming renovation of the Rozsa sound system presents the perfect opportunity to upgrade the DSP to a more functional unit: the Xilica FR1. The integration of the new DSP begins with creating a block diagram of the current system to determine our sources, destinations, and signal flow which astonishingly has not yet been done in 20 years. The secondary reason for this new DSP is to unify separate analogue systems such as the PA to the lobby and dressing rooms over a single Dante network. Finally, Xilica offers slick control surfaces with custom programmable interfaces, allowing us to create easy to use controls for complex system tasks.
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