AES British Section lectures - December 2005
The Exception That Proves the Rule - The Electro-Acoustics of Disney Hall - Home of the LA Philharmonic
Ben Lilly and Billy Woodman, ATC
The acoustic performance of Disney Hall is remarkable with an average RT60 of 2 sec's from 63Hz to 4kHz.
The hall opened in 20th October 2003 with the electro-acoustics being treated as if it were any large reverberant space using large line arrays suspended from the ceiling (similar to those used in large rock venues). The performance limitations of the sound reinforcement system in a space with such a quality natural acoustic caused immediate criticism of the hall, particularly from performers and music critics.
The solution was to treat the hall as an exception to the accepted general rule applied to large reverberant spaces and provide a system of exceptionally broad and even dispersion vs frequency to ensure that not only was the direct sound linear with frequency but so also was the reverberant sound. The system was stage located to guarantee that, even if the listener became aware of localization of the source, which he should not if the ratio of direct to reverberant sound is correct, then, there would be no disconnection between the visual and aural during a performance. This lecture deals with the requirements of quality reinforcement of live music in such a high performance space and the addition of local delayed sources beyond the critical distance to improve the articulation and intelligibility of speech.
Lecture recording - mp3 format (17.2 MB)
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