Oakland's Paramount Theatre is a cultural hub for the city, with all sorts of musical and comedy tours hitting the stage as well as local civic events, graduations and the Oakland Speakers' Series. Every so often theatre management shows a vintage film, which returns the venue to its original movie house glory.
The theatre, which seats around 3,000, opened in 1931 with the express goal of showing the major motion pictures of the day. The art deco style that was hip 76 years ago is still eye-catching, and the venue boasts a handful of unique charms. Of course, those things that make the Paramount a stunning venue for fans make it an acoustic challenge for sound professionals of all stripes. That's what Robert Lester, principal in the San Francisco-based audio visual and acoustical consulting firm Lewitz and Associates, Inc., found himself up against when the conversation first started with the Paramount staff about updating an old P.A. system that was installed in 1973.
In fact, there were a number of immediate challenges that Lester saw. "Besides the aesthetics and the beauty of the building, one of the things that was striking was the depth of the balcony, which could potentially pose some problems," he says.
Then there was the Paramount's ceiling. "There were some interesting things in the ceiling, which is made up of these curved intricate metal pieces, and I wasn't exactly sure what that would look like acoustically. There are no real flat hard reflective surfaces providing any early sound, and then the back walls — although there was some soft material put on the back walls, it was fairly thin and it was coming up in a lot of areas, so I was pretty certain we were going to get some echoes from the back wall."
The majority of the early discussions between client and designer, though, revolved around what kind of system they wanted to install in the theatre. After all, the Paramount has hosted such A-list talent as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Lyle Lovett and the like, as well as a number of second tier acts coming through the San Francisco Bay Area.
"At first, we decided to get a system that would replace anything artists brought in, a system of such quality that everyone would want to rent it," explains Jeff Ewald, Paramount's operations manager. Then they realized that no matter the quality, most A-list acts would fly their own rigs. So, there was a slight change in philosophy. "We rethought the general idea of the system and decided it should be something that could supplement the setups of large touring acts and operate as a stand alone system for smaller acts."
Lester adds, "We knew that no matter what we put up, those kinds of folks would most likely bring in their own system. In the middle range, those bands were renting sound systems and the facility management wanted to bring that business in-house." Knowing that a system would have to come up and down depending on the demands of a touring band, Lester and crew had to design a system that was flexible enough to accommodate that.
Beyond music, Paramount management were concerned that any system they installed provided clear speech intelligibility for the Speakers' Series and graduations that took place there. Then there were the times when a movie was played.
"Long story short, we ended up looking at a couple of different options," Lester reports. "One was a line array, hung left-right or left-center-right. We got up to where the clusters would need to be and we started getting a lot of shading from the depth of the balcony." If they brought the clusters down far enough to cover under the balcony, where the FOH position is typically located, there would be huge clusters to cover both above and below the balcony. That solution still wasn't good enough to cover the depth of the balcony and it was cost prohibitive.
The answer that presented itself was a non-traditional center cluster. "It was not centered in the traditional sense of left-center- right, but a center cluster that would be a mono system for the entire balcony," Lester reports. "The idea was to cover the whole balcony from that center system where the bottom box or bottom boxes in the cluster would be very wide in their dispersion."
Eventually the team decided to fly boxes from Meyer Sound. "They have a 120-degree horizontal down throw box that we could put on the bottom of the cluster that would get the width of the balcony fairly well," he says. "We were really concerned about the corner seating, because there were about 50 seats on each side where the intelligibility could have been fairly bad, and that wasn't acceptable for them. They really wanted to make sure that every seat could understand."
The center cluster includes three MILO cabinets, a MILO 120 unit and a M3D-Sub directional subwoofer. The main floor was covered by a left and right cluster of three MILO cabinets and a M3D-Sub that is rolled on stage via casters.
The system solved many of the initial issues and offered touring A-list acts the ability to use the central cluster to cover the balcony. "We offered them the ability to bring in their own left and right system and then plug in to the center cluster and use it," Lester explains, "knowing that they have not only good quality, but full coverage of that balcony."
More than loudspeakers and acoustic designs, the Paramount project included a handful of auxiliary assignments, such as a new isolated ground power system, a new RF system and the installation of Midas and Mackie boards at FOH. "We really tried to set up the whole system so it could be put in cases, broken down and wheeled away," he says. "All the cables were pre-terminated to Multicon connectors and labeled well. It's pretty simple in terms of how to put the system together."
All of that made it a fairly easy installation for the team at BBI Engineering, Inc., says vice president of engineering Mark Roos. "It was a pretty straightforward installation from our point of view, particularly with regard to the speakers and the Meyer gear," he says. "Actually, most of our challenges had more to do with relocating and revamping the backstage systems."
Roos and the BBI team also had to make sure to honor the Paramount's history, which was something that Lester had to also take into account when designing the system. Indeed, rather than what they had to do, Lester says, it was more about what they couldn't do. For instance, the Paramount crew had been aiming to get cinema sound Dolby and THX certification for some time. "They can't do that because of the acoustics," he says. "The acoustics have to be within certain parameters and to [get there] they would have to, for instance, cover all of the ornate side wall artwork. So, there's a tug between lowering the reverberation time by killing the aesthetics."
Of course, any theatre of this vintage was built with an orchestra pit and the Paramount is no different. When the pit is filled with seats, and the stage P.A. is pushed forward, Lester heard a gap in the coverage of those first rows. To cover it he had a handful of small Meyer boxes installed on brackets at the stage lip.
Even as the system is up and running, Lester reports that a final acoustical treatment to handle the bounces from the back wall is still in the works. It wasn't an imperative move because of the system's design. "We made sure that the seat to seat uniformity of sound coverage was good and that there wasn't a lot of excess energy hitting the high side walls and ceiling space," he says. "We tried to make sure the sound was directed at the people and not at the space itself."
That said, Lester recommended that the back wall get treated to help when touring bands throw up their own rigs. "We suggested that they do that once the system was in so they could have a good sense of what was required at that point," he says. "The sense was, as opposed to throwing tons of money at the back wall, they could put less money toward it and be a little bit more specific once they knew exactly where it was and what was required."
