The Dome
Background
The Dome was a course project in which we designed a theatre as well as the sound system being installed in the theatre. The design started by inputting "1970's retro futuristic theatre in the amazon rainforest" into an AI art generator. As we progressed through the class we hit different milestones which included material surfaces, size of the venue, speaker quantity and location, needed digital signal processor and more.
A full PDF report has been added here
Introduction
My partner and I's proposed theatre, the Davin Stone Demi-Dome (henceforth known as ‘The Dome’), takes inspiration from architectural movements of the 70s, using mostly natural materials and a brown-orange color scheme. Located in the rainforests of Brazil, The Dome can seat over 1600 people, and has a stage over 100 feet wide. The Dome is constructed mainly of locally sourced granite and basalt, as well as a solid mahogany stage. And most importantly, the main feature of the dome is its sloped moss seating, proving ample space for viewing the stage, as well as comfortable, organic seating. The Dome is best suited for large theatre productions and acoustic music shows; however, any event can find a home at The Dome.
Treatment
With such unique materials being used, we had to get creative in how we wanted to dampen the room. Since the roof of the theatre is made of basalt, and the floor is covered with moss, the RT60 for high frequencies was too short, while the RT60 for lower frequencies was too long. Heavy treatment of pegboard was needed on the basalt roof of the theatre to bring the RT60 within the target range of ~1.2 seconds. On top of the pegboard, the moss seating helps dampen the higher frequencies.
Loudspeaker Design
The house system is using Meyer’s flagship new line array cabinet, Panther. Panther is the ideal array system as it can put out the decibels needed to fill the venue, has 20% less power draw than an average line array cabinet, and allows for pinpoint dispersion control which provides incredible response prediction. In the Davin Demi-Done we have a total of 76 Meyer Panther cabinets; Each of our four main clusters for the orchestra has 10 cabinets while our balcony has 7 cabinets per array. Additionally, spread across the large proscenium we have 8 individual cabinets of Meyer Panthers filling in the gaps. All of this, paired with four arrays of Meyer 900-LFC with a total of 24 cabinets.
Networking and DSP
Our system contains 8 Galileo Galaxy 816 Digital Signal Processors with 7 having control over individual line arrays. Our 8th processor is being used as a routing machine with 3 analog inputs and running AVB outputs all hitting an Extreme 440 8 port switch which gives signal to the other processors. While setting up our processor we needed to find delay times to accurately time our system for the ideal audience listen experience. Using this equation, we found that our top boxes of Meyer Panther in our balcony arrays has a delay time of 70.4ms. Going down from there, the bottom box has a delay time of 64ms. Although this system is very big, using Meyer’s equipment, we have been able to simplify the system in a way that allows for easy control, easy access to equipment, and have great user interfaces.
