LONGWOOD, FL —When guest conductor and violinist Pinchas Zukerman led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in a concert at Northland, a Church Distributed, some feared that the performance would not sound its best in the church’s 3,000-capacity sanctuary.
“I was worried when I first walked into the building,” said Mark Melson, the symphony’s vice president of artistic operations, after seeing the wide dimensions of the room, “but my worries ended when the musicians started playing. The orchestra retained its natural warmth and presence at seats well out into the hall.”
Equipped with Meyer Sound’s Constellation system, engineers could use presets that provide a range of reverberation times and level settings, supporting not only symphonic events but also reinforced sound and congregational singing.
The Constellation system has helped the same sanctuary accommodate the diverse acoustic needs of the Florida Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Kiev Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, country star Wynonna, gospel music singer Kirk Franklin and contemporary Christian artist Michael W. Smith.
In order to emulate the reverberation characteristics of the Morton H. Meyerson Center, the Dallas Symphony’s home, Steve Ellison, director of applications, LCS Series, created a customized setting of early decay time (EDT) and reverberation time (RT).
The resulting system had an RT of 2.4 seconds and an EDT of 1.9 seconds, very close to the Meyerson measurements of 2.6 seconds RT and 1.9 seconds EDT.
“I was frankly amazed at how well the system worked,” said Dallas Symphony president Douglas Adams. “What I found particularly impressive is how I could maintain a clear sense of the origination of different instruments at various places around the stage. Each was perceived in its proper place, as it would be with natural acoustics.”
Marc McMurrin, Northland’s executive director of operations, also credited the Constellation’s ability to let Northland serve as a viable alternative performance space to organizations such as the Festival of Orchestras, a group dedicated to bringing symphonies to Central Florida. Florida’s Naples Philharmonic will perform in October and the Detroit Symphony with conductor Leonard Slatkin is slated to perform in early 2010.
“Our senior pastor, Joel Hunter, refers to our new building as ‘a communication device with a sanctuary attached,’” said McMurrin. “Having the technology to present symphonic music gives us a great tool for communication, one that helps us in our mission to serve the whole community.”
Completed in late 2007, the Longwood sanctuary of Northland, a Church Distributed was the world’s first house of worship to incorporate Meyer Sound’s Constellation electroacoustic architecture.
The system encompasses MS-Constellation processors, MS-VRAS processors, Mic-Omni Constellation microphones, and the company's most compact and versatile loudspeaker models including UPJ-1P compact VariO loudspeakers, UPM-1P loudspeakers, and MM-4 miniature loudspeakers. Independent of the Constellation system, the sound reinforcement setup utilizes Milo line array loudspeakers, CQ-1, CQ-2, UPJ-1P, and UPM-1P loudspeakers, in addition to M3D-Sub directional subwoofer, with system processing and drive supplied by a Galileo loudspeaker management system.
The building was designed by DCA Architects and Building God’s Way, with Daniel Cook as principal architect. The Northland Constellation system was designed by Sierra Madre, Calif.-based Platt Design Group and installed by the Burbank office of Electrosonic Systems, Inc., with final system tuning handled by Bob McCarthy, senior design consultant of Meyer Sound.
For more information, please visit www.meyersound.com.
