Traditionally, venues have been designed to have acoustics optimised for specific uses: theatres are designed for plays, concert halls for music, lecture halls for speech, cinemas for film surround sound. To use one of these venues for an application with different acoustical needs meant either putting architectural solutions in place or compromising a performance with inappropriate acoustics. But variable architectural solutions can be very expensive and have a limited range of effectiveness. Yet today's venues are expected to be capable of presenting the full spectrum of programme types.
"Most new venues are being built to be multipurpose, and existing ones are broadening their scope of events, says Meyer Sound president/CEO John Meyer. "This creates new demands on venue acoustics that call for a new way of approaching them. I think that with good planning and the proper application of technology, venues can meet all of their requirements without having to compromise one goal to achieve another. Constellation is a powerful and carefully considered response to the formidable acoustical needs of multipurpose venues."
Constellation enables a venue to provide acoustics appropriate to the needs of each program at the touch of a button, yielding numerous benefits. For the audience, a music concert in a multipurpose venue can have all of the warmth and resonance of a concert hall, while a play in the same space will exhibit increased intelligibility. Musicians enjoy an increased ability to hear each other, creating an onstage acoustical experience conducive to ensemble music-making. Constellation can even aid in presenting a balanced sound, helping to surmount well-known challenges like bringing instruments with poor projection, such as an orchestra's French horns and string basses, into the proper aural perspective.
Constellation employs Meyer Sound's VRAS variable room acoustic system processor in combination with newly designed Stella loudspeakers and Constellation microphones certified by Meyer Sound. The VRAS technology, originally developed by Dr. Mark Poletti of Industrial Research Limited, employs a powerful DSP engine capable of generating multichannel reverberation and early reflections, as well as mixing, processing, and routing them.
The sound of Constellation is natural because it behaves like a real room, with early reflections generated from stage sound and accurately directionalised, while reverberation comes from a combination of a digital reverberation chamber and a regenerative acoustical structure, reports the company. The regenerative portion of Constellation incorporates the natural acoustics of the room, rather than ignoring them or simply trying to overpower them with artificial reverberation. Pitch shifting and other artifacts are never incurred in Constellation, making it the best choice for delicate material like classical music, says the company.
"I was very excited by the possibilities when I first heard the VRAS technology. I also could see several ways to improve the effectiveness of electroacoustic architecture," states Meyer. "For a start, the system needed components designed specifically for it, but, more importantly, the intricate design and tuning processes for these systems needed to become more complete, efficient, and methodical. Constellation addresses all of these issues by committing our highly trained and experienced specialists to create and commission each system using purpose-built Meyer Sound components." All Constellation components, including microphones, loudspe
