New Theater Features Meyer Sound For Main, Effects & Surround

Photos: Kevin Berne

Berkeley (CA) Repertory Theater (BRT) is celebrated the opening of its long-awaited Roda Theatre, a 600 -seat proscenium theater conceived several years ago to complement Berkeley Rep’s four-hundred-seat thrust stage.

Recognized as one of the finest regional theaters in the nation, Berkeley Rep has a distinguished thirty-three-year history in a very supportive community of theatre lovers. Its new facility is the jewel of a growing downtown arts district and combines careful aesthetic choices, fine acoustic design, and a sound system featuring Meyer Sound loudspeakers.

“This theater is my dream system”, says Garth Hemphill of GLH Design, a sound system consulting firm based in San Francisco. In addition to helping select system components with John Monitto and Todd Meier of Meyer Sound, Hemphill was responsible for system layout infrastructure, including the selection of the matrix mixing control system for the front-end.

The Roda Theatre has arguably one of the largest surround sound systems of any regional theater in the United States. Eight Meyer Self-Powered UPM-1Ps serve as dedicated surround and house effects speakers, while an additional 29 UPM-1Ps are utilized as front fills, box fills, upstairs effects speakers, and as speakers for the upstairs and downstairs lobby areas.

Hemphill adds, “The matrix mixing system will accommodate twenty-four discrete channels of output that can drive as many speakers as we need for surround work. We have twenty side fills and rear fills in the space that could be applied to surround imaging—and that doesn’t even include the mains!” Eight Meyer CQ-1s loudspeakers are divided into four that comprise a center cluster, flanked by pairs to the left and right.

“The great thing about the CQ-1 is that its directional control extends into lower frequencies than most cabinets its size,” Hemphill says. “The acoustician designed a fairly live space so you wouldn’t need a lot of reinforcement. An inherent problem with such a space is that as soon as you start focusing speakers, you get reflections that could affect intelligibility—especially when they exceed thirty milliseconds and are in the lower frequencies. Shorter reflections are desirable because it gives your brain a sense of the size of the space. The CQ-1’s directvity control allows designers to keep more of the low frequencies directed at the audience and off the hard surfaces.”

The CQ-1s are also fed via Meyer Sound’s VEAM—an all-in-one connector that replaces the amplifier’s AC connector with a multi-pin connector that handles AC power, audio and RMS (Remote Monitoring System) data.

Meyer Sound provided four self-powered USW-1P subwoofers, specifically chosen for their smaller size so they could be easily moved about. For the theater’s opening production of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, two USW-1Ps were stationed on the catwalk and two on the deck, adding colorations that the audience likely wouldn’t experience in other spaces.

Four UM-100Ps and two UPA-1Ps serve as foldback speakers, providing monitors for the performers as well as a way to bring effects back onto the stage. In addition, twelve of Meyer’s new four-inch cube MM-4 speakers have a home here, acting as “cricket speakers” that can easily be placed throughout the performance space. Originally designed by Meyer Sound for a permanent sound art installation in Lyon, France, the rugged MM-4 caught the imagination of BRT’s former resident sound designer, James LeBrecht, who thought they’d be perfect for delivering ambient sound throughout the theater.

For system calibration, ten Meyer CP-10 parametric equalizers were provided to the theater. While the matrix mixer has its own equalization available at the outputs, the addition of the CP-10s freed up the DSP horsepower on the mixer to be used for input equalization, compression, delays — whatever task was required. Also, Meyer Sound installed its SIM System II, making it easy to quickly measure and equalize the sound system before and during every new show. Meyer’s RMS software, running on a Windows personal computer, enables the Roda Theatre sound crew to keep tabs on the operation of every Self-Powered loudspeaker in the theater and mute or solo loudspeakers in any desired combination.

The Roda Theatre is a landmark in the long partnership between Meyer Sound and Berkeley Rep. “This theater is not about bells and whistles,” said LeBrecht at the dedication ceremony for the space last March. “This is about being able to dream up any use of sounds, music, voices, noise, and realize that dream. You should be able to call upon the sound for a show and not be aware of the effort. It should fit seamlessly. And what I heard in this theater recently told me that we had this.”