USA - The Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield is known for its lush, rolling hills, palatial homes, and sense of community. And the Jewish Community Centre is a local nexus, a sprawling campus offering athletic facilities, continuing education, a range of community outreach programmes. The JCC is also home to the Berman Centre for the Performing Arts, a newly-built 600-seat theatre hosting a steady calendar of music, dance, performance, film festivals, and special events.
The JCC is home to the Berman Centre for the Performing Arts, a newly-built 600-seat theatre
The theatre is designed for flexibility, with movable walls that close to form two adjacent ballrooms, or open to create a single large theatre, with pull-out seating that expands the main room's 300 seats to 600. "It's very much a multi-use facility," explains Advanced Lighting and Sound's Bob Sullivan, the contractors on the project. "The system had to be adaptable to several different room configurations, and sound good across a wide range of program material."
"It's a rather wide room, and that was a concern from an audio perspective," says Tim Hamilton of Grand Rapids, MI-based Acoustics By Design, the consultants behind the audio and video design. "But the client specified that the speakers have low visual impact. So the challenge was to provide adequate coverage using a minimal number of speakers. In addition, the speakers at the rear of the hall had to function as separate audio systems when the space was configured as two multipurpose rooms, or as delay speakers for the main system when it was configured as one large room - two very different scenarios."
The main sound system is comprised of left and right arrays of two Renkus-Heinz ST4R three-way tri-amped loudspeakers. CFX212M two-way systems at the rear of the hall act as delays or provide separate coverage, depending on the configuration. Crown amplification powers the CFX units. A Yamaha M7CL 48-channel console handles FOH duties, with DSP handled by a Yamaha DME 24N processor. Several more CFX212M boxes provide monitoring on stage.
Hamilton says the venue's relatively low ceiling added another challenge. "It was a bit tricky configuring the arrays to deliver a true stereo image from where we had to position them, but the ST4's coverage and pattern control made it easier to accomplish."
"Commissioning the system was a breeze," adds Sullivan. "When you're setting it up, you can pay attention to the room, not the presets. They've simplified the whole process - it's all in the box."
