Bartlesville Community Center completes extensive audio system revitalization.
While Bartlesville, Okla., may not find itself included in the same sentence as New York or Los Angeles when one discusses performing arts venues, the city’s main cultural facility is at the cutting edge in every sense of the word. This vibrant community of roughly 35,000, some 47 miles due north of Tulsa, is home to the Bartlesville Community Center, a positively stunning complex designed to provide cultural and educational opportunities for the city.
A Unique Performance Space
Designed by William Wesley Peters, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and vice president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Bartlesville Community Center’s dramatic architecture emphasizes the use of sweeping curves, circles, ovals and acute and obtuse angles. Mrs. Wright selected most of the interior décor. In addition to concerts, the Center presents ballet, a wide variety of stage productions, an art gallery, and meeting facilities for a broad spectrum of civic groups. The beautiful multifunctional facility is equipped to handle events as large as state conventions, and as small as group meetings of 15.
The Bartlesville Community Center recently completed an extensive upgrade designed to enhance the sound reinforcement capabilities in the building’s primary performing arts space — the Marie Foster Performing Arts Hall. After an extensive evaluation period that included onsite demonstrations from all the major equipment manufacturers, the contract was ultimately awarded to SFH Productions, LLC, of Tulsa, Okla. The system that won the bidding process required the ability to easily adapt to a broad spectrum of presentations. Key components in the new sound reinforcement system include all self-powered loudspeakers from D.A.S. Audio, a Yamaha digital console and LightViper Fiber Optic audio transport capability.
The Marie Foster Performing Arts Hall is a highly sophisticated performing arts venue. At approximately 125 feet long by 125 feet wide, the space has a concave ceiling that is 60 feet at its highest point with a 25-foot slope to the floor. There are 1,692 seats, with an additional space able to accommodate 10 wheel chairs. There is no center aisle — seating is arranged in the Continental style, with each row 42 inches wide. Each row is actually considered to be an aisle. The sound reverberation rate in the space is controlled with the drapes on the side and rear walls in optimized ranges of 1.9 seconds for symphony concerts to 1.1 seconds for theater performances.
With capacity for 64 microphones and input capability for a variety of playback sources, the room has a number of unique attributes. Chief among them is a stage lift at the front of the stage area. This lift is 62 feet wide and 11 feet deep and can be raised and lowered to address a variety of room configurations. At the uppermost of five available levels, the lift can be used as an extension of the stage. At the Auditorium level (the next lower level), it can provide seating for an additional 86 people. At the orchestra pit level, the lift can accommodate 45 musicians. The remaining two levels facilitate stage access and storage.
According to Gary Howard, principal of SFH Productions, a full-service A/V firm that offers equipment rental, audio recording and related services in addition to systems design and installation, “The space required a system that would complement the room’s already very nice acoustics. Further, it had to be capable of providing a natural sound that patrons who are accustomed to non-amplified acoustic performances could enjoy. The system’s ability to provide even dispersion throughout the entire seating area without sounding harsh or overpowering was also a key design mandate and, of equal importance, the client requested that it have the ability to blend aesthetically with the room as much as possible and present a clean, unobtrusive appearance to the audience.”
The Nuts and Bolts
The D.A.S. loudspeaker system installed by Howard and his crew consists of three main components: two symmetric left and right flown line arrays, floor-mounted double 18-inch subwoofers and four D.A.S. Audio Variant 25A ultra-compact line array modules that can be positioned for front fill — typically along the front edge of the orchestra pit. Each line array consists of two Aero CA-215A monoamplified arrayable subwoofers positioned atop ten Aero 28A two-way, compact line array elements. Each line array is flown using StageMaker SM5 Electric Chain Hoists. The arrays are raised and lowered for each performance as necessary — to avoid visually conflicting with the regularly scheduled acoustic performances of the local symphony orchestra.
Complementing the flown loudspeaker arrays are dual, ground-stacked Aero 182A 2K subwoofers — positioned just to the outside of each loudspeaker column. When monitors are required, a combination of seven D.A.S. SML-12A and two SML-15A powered stage monitors are provisioned according to the requirements of the specific performance.
The front of house mix position is located near the very back of the space — just left of center. Here, a Yamaha LS9-32 digital mixing console with 32-mic/line inputs and a total of 64 channels resides. Audio transport between the stage area and FOH is managed by a LightViper Fiber Optic digital snake with 32 x 8 stage inputs and a 2-way monitor split (one digital over AES/EBU, one analog over standard DB-25 to XLR connections). The FOH board has 32 digital channels fed by the LightViper snake and 32 analog channels fed by their existing analog patchbay, all of which can be used simultaneously for a total of 64 channels. An additional LS-9 console is available for monitors, providing up to 16 monitor mixes. This console is fed by the analog monitor split from the LightViper snake. The decision to feed the monitor console via analog rather than digitally was made to provide independent gain control for the monitors and to enable external touring acts to use an existing analog monitor console if desired.
Howard commented on the system’s audio transport facilities. “One of the requirements was that their existing 64 channels of analog line cabling to FOH still be accessible, but with signal transport on the new digital snake. For this, we took their existing patch panel, which was hard wired from the stage to the FOH position, and broke that connection. Using short XLR patch jumpers, we created a patch panel at the stage area where they could patch from any analog channel into any channel on the digital snake input box. This gives the house audio tech the ability to use up to 32 of their existing analog lines — carried over the higher quality digital snake.”
The LightViper snake feeds the Yamaha mixer via the LightViper VIM-MY32 MY expansion cards. Two runs of multimode duplex fiber are provided for stage left and right to accommodate moving the snake into position for touring acts who wish to use various components of the system (such as their own monitor board, but with the house PA system and/or mixer). Due to the extremely long cable runs — the longest of which is over 450 feet — fiber was the logical choice. All FOH connections are made to the snake with Neutrik OpticalCon fiber connectors.
An Ashly Protea 3.24CL 3-input, 6-output loudspeaker processor controls the main left and right arrays and subwoofers. Inputs to the Protea are fed with three of the eight returns from the digital snake — ensuring an all-digital FOH signal path until just before the inputs to the processor. Additional returns are used for front fills and sidefills as required, using the LS-9’s matrixing capabilities. The Yamaha LS9-32’s onboard EQ also augments the system.
In addition to an existing microphone complement of various Shure and AKG models, Howard specified six Audix OM3 handheld dynamic microphones for vocals, four Audix i5 dynamic instrument mics for general purpose use, and three ADX51 condenser instrument mics for group vocals and string sections. For drum miking applications, an Audix DP7 dynamic mic kit is available.
Ready for the Down Beat
The Marie Foster Performing Arts Hall’s audio upgrade was completed in January 2008 and was immediately placed into service. “The system made its ‘baptism by fire’ debut on Jan. 16 with a performance by the Temptations,” notes Howard. “Since that time, it has also been used for a concert by the 1st Infantry Division Band. What really makes this system so compelling is the combination of the D.A.S. loudspeakers and the digital capabilities of the combined Yamaha mixer and LightViper digital snake. Throughout the entire hall, there is no more than a ± 3 dB SPL variance. The D.A.S. loudspeaker system delivers clean and even sound coverage without overpowering the audience. It’s a high quality sound that never gets aggressive.”
Anthony Hinton, technical director for the Bartlesville Community Center, is equally enthusiastic. “When I was looking for an audio system for the community center,” said Hinton, “I knew I needed something that would enhance the auditorium and not take away from the natural feel of the room. The D.A.S. Aero line array system did just that. Integrated with the LightViper digital snake and the Yamaha console, audio throughout the entire system is extremely clean and natural sounding. The combined system is not too loud as to distract one from enjoying the show, and yet it fills the room with whatever is taking place on stage without going overboard. The reproduction is very smooth and accurate. I am very impressed with the D.A.S./LightViper/Yamaha combination and would recommend this system to anyone.”
