Signature Audio completes major sound renovation at Ball State’s Emens Auditorium
When the phone rang in October, Sam Walton had no idea that the opportunity of a lifetime was just a short conversation away.
Walton is the senior manager of Signature Audio Systems — a professional audio services company out of Wixom, Mich. In the five years of the company’s existence, he never expected a call that would not only change the face of Signature Audio, but lead to one of the biggest installs of 2007.
On the other end of the line was the familiar voice of Christian O’Brian, a colleague of Walton who now lives and works in Muncie, Ind., as the lead sound technician for Emens Auditorium at Ball State University. The theater, in the middle of a multi-million dollar all-out renovation, needed a new sound system, and O’Brian thought Signature Audio needed to throw its hat into the ring.
Walton decided to participate, and the reward was huge — a contract heralded as the company’s largest to date.
“We were excited and honored to be a part of the bidding process with Ball State,” Walton said. “We knew that we were equipped to do the job right and couldn’t wait to get involved and get our hands dirty.”
Awarding the contract to Signature Audio wasn’t so out of the ordinary, according to Robert Myers, director of John R. Emens College-Community Auditorium and Pruis Hall, who simply wanted the best people for the job.
“When you’re looking into a major sound upgrade, you try to exploit all of your resources and the contacts that you have,” Myers said. “We looked throughout not only Indiana, but throughout the Midwest at different companies and Signature Audio is a company that Christian (O’Brian), my sound technician, was familiar with so that was one of the places that we reached out to.
“The bid was competitive for the equipment list that they had,” he added. “We felt that the support we were going to get (from Signature Audio) was also a plus.”
Of course, a job this big entailed tight deadlines and offered many obstacles, including budgetary ones.
“This project came about very quickly,” said Barry Rowland, the auditorium’s stage manager. “The money just kind of appeared — it didn’t come out of our budget — and so there was a very tight window where Bob (Myers) thought we needed to act on it quickly. Luckily, Christian started working here and had worked with Sam in the past, so we had some good input.
“When we first starting talking about it, we did some adapting to try and get the costs down,” he added. “We had no idea what things cost, and Sam and Jeff Keel were both very helpful. They stayed within our budget and saved us a fair amount of money. It was just a perfect fit for what we wanted.”
When Walton and company entered Emens it was a construction war zone with contractors of different types battling for space and time to wrap up their projects.
Despite the challenges, Signature Audio finished the audio installation project under budget and in just 12 onsite build days.
“The installation timeline was really short and these guys did a nice job meeting our deadline,” Myers said. The end result was a versatile system with all the bells and whistles that any sound tech would love to have at their fingertips.
The new and improved system consists exclusively of Harman Professional products, including a 48-channel Soundcraft MH-4 house audio console, BSS front-of-house processing and a trio of high-performance dbx Professional DriveRack 4820TIOs that process the loudspeaker arrangement. Emens Auditorium has the first three dbx Professional 4820TIOs in existence. JBL Professional VerTec VT-4888DP-ANs anchor the main left and right clusters that can be raised and lowered at will. Crown Audio I-Tech series amplifiers drive the center cluster of JBL Professional VerTec VT-4888s that can operate independently from the left and right arrays — a key design feature on the auditorium team’s wish list.
“I couldn’t be happier with the outcome of the install,” Walton said. “The sound is fantastic, which goes without saying. This installation is very special, as it is comprised exclusively of Harman Professional products. From microphone to speaker, everything in the signal chain is a Harman Pro product. Signature Audio and Harman Professional are very proud to have been chosen as such a big part of the renovation at Emens Auditorium.”
The system is perfect for the theater that houses everything from graduation ceremonies to rock concerts to dance shows to symphony concerts.
“The outcome has been very good,” Rowland said. “We wanted the center cluster to be stand-alone because we do so many different kinds of shows. This is a rock ‘n’ roll system and we’re doing graduations with it. That’s the diversity we needed from this system. (Signature Audio) did that and adapted it to what we needed.”
To top off the sophisticated arrangement, all system components are linked using Harman Pro’s HiQnet communications and control protocol for easy system control and monitoring.
“The Harman name makes a difference in that with the system we have now, it is all controlled by HiQnet,” O’Brian said. “Now I only have to open one computer program to have access to everything. It makes it significantly easier to work with. Plus, with HiQnet, it tells you if there is a problem right away and you’re able to fix it.
“The sound quality through the whole hall is so much more consistent and even than it was with the previous sound system,” he added of the system as a whole. “It makes coming to work easy. No matter what is going on, you know it’s going to be an easy day.”
The main task was to provide a clean and crisp sound to Emens Auditorium patrons. Now the fully renovated theater sounds as good as it looks.
“Sometimes in this industry it’s when you don’t hear any comments that you know that you’re doing a pretty good job,” O’Brian said. “We don’t get comments like we used to about people not being able to hear. Some of the higher-ups from the university that came through early on when it was first installed were all very pleased, too.”
