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MCH at ASA San Diego 2019
MCH principals and consultants presented four papers at the meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, the primary scientific professional society for all aspects of acoustics, at its semi annual meeting in San Diego at the Hotel del Coronado, December 2-6, 2019. See below for our paper abstracts.
Topics presented by MCHers included various performing arts venues and challenges encountered during renovation and design, large music rehearsal spaces, and outdoor entertainment noise.
Tony Hoover was especially active at this meeting. He chaired a session on Outdoor Entertainment Noise, wrapped up his long-held, 12 year, position as chair of the College of Fellows, and coordinated and participated in this year's ASA JAM, which he founded and has led since the beginning. We are thrilled to have such an important member of ASA as part of our firm.
Simple solutions, happy clients
By Tony Hoover, FASA, INCE Bd. Cert.
Various problems involving outdoor entertainment noise were resolved with simple solutions, which were especially gratifying when clients had presumed expensive and complicated solutions. This paper will review some examples, including a lakeside amusement park ride, an outdoor town center featuring evening movies and weekend performances, an NFL stadium that hosts several rock concerts every year, and Mumbai “firecracker” bands impacting Bollywood soundstages.
Victoria Hall Theatre – Almost ready for prime time
By Tony Hoover, FASA, INCE Bd. Cert.
The Victoria Hall Theatre was built in 1921 as a lively church in the center of Santa Barbara, California, but matured into a tired theatre in the center of the downtown Arts District. Initial considerations whether to renovate began with a study about minimizing intrusion of loud dance music from a neighboring open-deck club. Thereafter, the renovation took off, with major changes including an entirely new stage house, and replacing a problematic balcony with a continuous floor plan with great sightlines for its 294 seats. Exterior noise isolation is excellent considering its wood construction, and interior finishes promote great clarity and improved intimacy. However, the decision to reuse the six old air handling units in the attic, compounded by some questionable mechanical engineering omissions, undermined the theatre’s potential to make sound system reinforcement essentially unnecessary. This paper will review various renovation decisions, and the several steps to quiet the renovated HVAC to its current moderate levels, plus the follow-up that almost provided authorization to further quiet the system.
Three music facility makeovers in Arizona
By David Conant, FASA & Arjun Shankar
Considerable prior experience at higher education music campuses in Flagstaff, Chandler and Mesa, Arizona led to our engagement in substantial repurposing and renovation of their rehearsal, recording, practice, and performance facilities. Specific mechanical system noise, poor sound isolation, and overall room-acoustics issues are discussed as well as their solutions and measured data upon completion.
Ten acoustically challenged venue renovations, nine solutions
By David Conant, FASA
This paper provides a travelogue through ten performing arts venues in the West that are architecturally or historically important. While nine found happiness, the tenth still struggles mightily with an inconvenient conundrum—an intractable juxtaposition of its acoustical challenges spread across its history, its geographic setting and its name. Where salient, measured data are presented for each along with highlights of the re-design challenges and their specific solutions, several of which were quite novel.
Links of Interest:
Acoustical Society of America website
San Diego 2019 Meeting Program
