Overture Hall in Madison, Wisconsin's Overture Center for the Performing Arts Hall is not "tunable" as much as it is transformable. It can sound, according to technical director Steve Schroeder, extremely dry, "like playing into an old sock," or it can be a superior orchestral hall with excellent reverberation and decay time.
Designed by Cesar Pelli & Associates in collaboration with Potter Lawson, Flad & Associates, Theatre Projects Consultants and acoustical consultants Kirkegaard Associates, the new 2,251-seat, multi-purpose hall is the heart of the Overture Center. It literally morphs from an acoustically dead space suited for amplified sound to an acoustically live space, both warm and brilliant, for symphony and opera. Still, with some three-quarters of the events booked into the space requiring some sort of sound reinforcement–and half of those events using the house sound system–the choice of system components was critical. Schroeder began his search in earnest long before the hall's grand opening festival.
"We had looked at several digital consoles," he says, "and honestly, I was a little reluctant about 'going digital.' A lot of people have their hands on a console in a venue like this, and my main concern was that people who were unfamiliar with whatever we purchased would not be comfortable mixing on it."
In January 2004, Schroeder and house audio engineer Bruce (JR) Conklin demonstrated a Yamaha PM1D for a week while Overture Hall hosted NPR's A Prairie Home Companion show. "We were impressed by the mixing layout, which is very much like an analog control surface," says Schroeder. If the hall staff was impressed, so was the technical staff of Prairie Home, who were also looking at the PM1D for their own needs; shortly after using the demo board in Madison, they purchased two units.
The Overture staff concluded that they could also teach people coming into the venue how to mix a show on the PM1D. "Not necessarily how to set up their show," says Schroeder, "but we thought we'd be able to turn over the console so they could mix on it, and that's proven to be true."
The house loudspeaker system is based around a center cluster of six JBL VerTec model VT4887 small format line array speakers and two suspended arrays of VT4889 cabinets, flown left and right. These arrays are located above the proscenium arch and are flown in on demand from their storage position above the ceiling.
The center is addressable as an independent cluster-feed, and the L/R arrays are addressable through independent house left and house right feeds. Distributed and support speaker systems include two Turbosound TQ440 cabinets for deck fill and 36 Apogee ACS SAT3 front fill cabinets–18 built into the lip of the stage apron, plus an additional 18 built into the orchestra pit lip. The under-balcony system includes 15 Tannoy CMS 50 ICT ceiling speakers, four Turbosound TCS-40 cabinets for the upper balcony area, and a total of 18 Tannoy i5AW cabinets for side box fills. Two carts, each fitted with four JBL VerTec VT4880 dual 18-inch subs, can be rolled out and placed on the apron against the proscenium walls when additional low end support is required.
Based on the classic model of a horseshoe-shaped opera house with box seats lining the side walls, Overture Hall was designed with no flat, parallel surfaces. The hall's extensive adjustable absorption in the audience chamber (via a control system from Secoa of Minneapolis, Minn.) reduces reverberation modestly for opera, and dramatically for amplified shows. A concrete slab forms the acoustic ceiling high above an acoustically transparent perforated metal ceiling.
Adjustable reflectors above the metal ceiling are designed to redirect sound back down into the hall, and curtains above the ceiling are designed to either dampen sound or allow reverberation. Acoustically, the hall represents an uncommon solution to the challenge inherent in creating a
space that must accommodate the Madison Opera, Madison Symphony Orchestra and Madison Ballet, as well as amplified touring productions.
An unusually high (30- to 45-foot) adjustable proscenium arch ensures that the volume enclosed by the orchestra shell is fully integrated with the main volume of the house. But it's the orchestra shell itself that is the most remarkable part of this hall: a 170-ton, steel-framed structure accommodates a 4,500-pipe concert organ and moves on railroad tracks beneath the stage from a storage space behind the stage's rear wall. The orchestral shell, according to the staff, is so large that it "has its own zip code."
Setting recallability was another strong sell point for the PM1D. "We do a certain amount of rep work here," says Schroeder, "which means that Puccini's Turandot might rehearse on a Wednesday, and play Friday and Sunday evenings. We store all of our settings for the opera, then bring the console back out into the house for a live performance, and then bring the console back to the booth for the opera. A rock band might be sandwiched between performances of Turandot, with no problem.
"My boss hates a 'dark' house," adds Schroeder. "In a sense, this system helps keep the lights on."
