OMG!!! They used their ears.


Now I know I’m going to enjoy the new home of the Milwaukee Symphony.👌👌👌
I found the last three paragraphs really interesting. A bigger crowd equals more clarity. Hmmm.

A FINAL TUNE-UP
By: PAUL KOSIDOWSKI 

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 08, 2021. TAGGED UNDER: 2021.22 SEASON, BRADLEY SYMPHONY CENTER

Walk into any music venue—whether large or small—and you’re likely to see an array of microphones and cables crisscrossing the space, along with some headphone clad technicians sitting at mixing boards.

I certainly expected to see an array of equipment in Allen-Bradley Hall when I visited a recent Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra rehearsal. It was two weeks before the opening concert, and was attended by the acousticians from Akustiks, a Connecticut firm charged with making the hall sound as good as it looks.

But the only equipment Paul Scarbrough and Christopher Blair are planning to use to make the adjustments in the hall are the audio receivers that both have relied upon for their whole lives. Their ears.

The microphones and speaker arrays you see in many concert halls, Scarbrough explains, are used for recordings, and occasionally for non-symphonic groups that might play in the space. The sound the audience hears at an MSO concert depends only on the musicians and the design and physical configuration of the hall.

That’s why Scarbrough and Blair have been involved from the very beginning of the Bradley Symphony Center project.

“We laid out the key dimensions of the stage, the basic parameters and the shape of the canopy elements,” explains Scarbrough, referring to the walls and ceiling that surround the stage. “The architect then interpreted those basic dimensions and picked up on some of the historic architecture in the existing building.”

A key “parameter” involved one of the most challenging parts of the Symphony Center design and construction. “Paul convinced them that they have to move the rear stage wall back,” says Blair. Given the building’s status as a historic landmark, this meant sliding the entire 625-ton wall, 35 feet east to create a larger stage space for the orchestra.

“The acoustics team didn’t have to figure out how to do it,” laughs Blair, “but we asked for it.” And in August 2019, the wall was moved.

With the Bradley Symphony Center’s construction complete, Scarbrough and Blair have been here the past week to “tune” the hall using some of the architectural elements that have been built into the stage. They’ve been listening to the orchestra rehearse and making adjustments so that both the orchestra and the audience hear music that’s balanced, rich in detail, and clear.

Scarbrough likens the process to sitting at the eye doctor while he or she cycles through different lenses to find the right prescription: “You start with the large adjustments,” he says, “‘is this clearer, or this’ and work your way down to the finest detail.”

The large adjustments were made earlier in the week, primarily by changing the height and angle of the acoustic panels that hang above the stage. Today, the attention will be on the six large “windows”—actually mesh screens–that flank the stage. From the hall, they appear to be decorative—large, mullioned arches. But as Scarbrough explains as he shows me into a large room behind the left side of the stage, each screen masks a large door that can be opened or closed to let more or less sound into the backstage room. That, of course, means the more or less sound is being reflected back into the concert hall.

Letting some of the orchestra’s sound escape into a back room might seem like a bad thing, but it is part of the balancing process.

“You might think that you want every ounce of acoustic energy to get from the stage out into the audience,” explains Scarbrough. Blair jumps in to finish his thought: “If you provide that, nobody can hear anything. It’s just too much “early” energy. The sound that comes back to the orchestra from the hall—the ‘delayed’ sound—is what gives the orchestra the sense of whether it’s playing in tune. Or if the instruments are balanced. You really need the reverberation and feedback from the hall to make it work.”

That balance is necessary for both the players and the listeners. Throughout the tuning rehearsal, Blair sits on stage to hear what the musicians hear while Scarbrough sits in the audience. In between selections, the acoustics team talks to MSO Music Director Ken-David Masur and the orchestra members about what they are hearing onstage. At times, Masur and other musicians will wander into the audience while the orchestra plays. Later, they can also listen to recordings of the rehearsal made with a special stereo microphone positioned in the hall.

“It’s a constant process of talking with Ken-David and the musicians and getting feedback,” says Scarbrough. “When we make adjustments, are we moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?”

The real test, of course, comes that evening, when the orchestra plays for an invited audience—the first time it has played for a full audience in the new hall.

“When the audience will come in, the clarity will increase,” explains Scarbrough, “and we anticipate that. In an empty hall, it’s always a little on the mushy side.”

And the evening concert proves Scarbrough’s point. Playing a wide range of music for a nearly full house, Masur and the MSO fill the Allen-Bradley hall with music that is full of warmth, clarity, and full-blooded life.

The MSO Classics season opened October 1, and it features an array of fall concerts including the return of former Concertmaster Frank Almond, performing Bruch’s violin concerto. The Pops season opens October 29-31 with Prohibition, featuring music from the era that the Bradley Symphony Center first opened. Tickets to all concerts are now on sale at mso.org.


toolbox149
Someone should have mentioned all this to the designers of Roy Thompson Hall.
I moved from Detroit after graduate school to Chicago in the 1980s. At the time they were just beginning to restore Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, and it was sonically perfect back then and at present.
  Chicago’s Orchestra Hall was built by the same Architect in the 1920s, but with a different layout.  Chicago was the sea shell design, Detroit the shoebox, and Chicago was always considered a sub optimal hall.  Most of the Reiner and Solti recordings were made at the now defunct Medinah Temple.  When Chicago was attempting a rebuild in the 90s I was amused to learn that they were standing experts to Detroit to study the Hall there
Hall acoustics are a crapshoot according to the best acousticians out there. They can use all the technology at their disposal and they still won’t know if they have a good outcome sonically until it’s built. At least with electronics it’s easier to experiment
You are right generally .... Save for some genius in acoustic....There is some in the world able to figure it out with their experience....For example the remarkable acoustic of the hall in some middle-age monasteries and abbey reputed to this day for their S.Q.....Today anybody can be guided by acoustic handbook to figure it out...But it takes the ears to solve the problem like in middle age times...For a computer "timbre" is a bunch of frequencies, not  only so for ears in a small room... 😁😊

But "small room" is another story acoustically than Hall acoustic....Timing here play another role and reflection ,absorption,diffusion also dont need the same ratio at all... ....

At the end it is the ears who say his words in the 2 cases though....

By the way i experimented without electronic device in a "bad" square room with one speaker in a bad corner, i used only mechanical Helmholtz tubes-bottles ( 40 of them in different location and mechanically adjustable in lenght (neck and bottle) and for sure diffusive-absorbing-and reflective materials and devices at different location in the room....I solved all problem but it takes me almost 1 year of full time listenings experiments at no cost though at least.... Cost was only fun time... There is no bad room only uncontrolled room in acoustic...
Hall acoustics are a crapshoot according to the best acousticians out there.  They can use all the technology at their disposal and they still won’t know if they have a good outcome sonically until it’s built. At least with electronics it’s easier to experiment 
Great thread post!

Thanks...

All that is fantastic...

It is the exact same process by which i created my audio room from my small room...LISTENINGS EXPERIMENTS...No electronic equalization which is useless almost to finish any acoustic job and cannot be anything else than a secondary tool....

I even created and design myself my own Helmholtz mechanical equalizer to create the effect described in this post:

Absorbing and reflecting devices are good in balance in the right locations but diffusers are very imporetant and my Helmholtz bottles-tubes grid transformed my room in a more adapted set of pressure zones tuned for my specific speakers...Controls of reverberation and timing of various wavefronts is the key....


Most people buy costly gear because they cannot afford an audio dedicated room.... It takes only a dedicated room to me to create Hi-FI at no cost....This is the most important secret in audio....No manufacturer has interest to spell it like it is: key to the greater S.Q. improvement at the least cost...It is not a conspiracy, only ignorance motivated by the bad habit to upgrade instead of thinking...My system cost is under 500 bucks...It is not the "best" there is at all... But rightfully embedded with all mechanical, electrical and acoustical parameters under a set of minimal controls, i have not listen to anything that put mine in complete shame....I live with it smiling....


By the way electronical mesurement of gear is there for good engineering standardization process... But there is only one master in audiophile journey and in acoustic science: EARS....The sound we listen to listening music dont come from the speakers but from the coupled speakers/room ALWAYS.....Think about that...

By the way a voice or musical timbre experience is a a third dimension limited and compressed or/and decompressed breathing "volume" in space-time or time-space OF THE LISTENING  ROOM, not a bunch of frequencies and harmonics passively added to one another only, like in a mathematical Fourrier addition describing what is  coming from the RECORDING ROOM and engraved on cd  ...

Acoustic is the sleeping princess in audio, all the gear are only the 7 working dwarves...Be the prince and kiss the sleeping princess....



You might think that you want every ounce of acoustic energy to get from the stage out into the audience,” explains Scarbrough. Blair jumps in to finish his thought: “If you provide that, nobody can hear anything. It’s just too much “early” energy. The sound that comes back to the orchestra from the hall—the ‘delayed’ sound—is what gives the orchestra the sense of whether it’s playing in tune. Or if the instruments are balanced. You really need the reverberation and feedback from the hall to make it work.


Wow! As if measurements aren't able to capture all elements of how a space sounds. What a surprise!
nothing new, every hall of note starts w math, science, expertise and gets tuned by ear later…..

and often retuned….. repeat…