Typical open offices are active spaces, and many people have difficulty concentrating in these noisy spaces. Many coworking spaces provide “privacy pods,” or partially open seating areas to focus and have quiet conversation. Proper acoustic design and material selection for privacy pods is essential, and also a golden opportunity for collaboration between architects, interior designers, and acousticians.

Providing quiet areas where members can take private phone calls is also essential. These areas must be fully enclosed to ensure adequate speech privacy, and so proper sound isolation design is key.

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Denver School of the Arts is an arts magnet school serving middle and high school students from throughout the Denver Public School District. Soundpost designed a new audio system for DSA’s Schomp Theatre, a 525-seat intimate venue used for a wide variety of student theatre and music productions.  the new system includes new Yamaha DSP, QX-series and JF-Series loudspeakers from EAW, and amplification by Powersoft.

Jonathan Howard, DSA’s Technical Director, says “The sound quality and stereo imaging is so much better than it used to be.”

Many thanks to our collaborators at DK Audio Video, The Marshank Group, EAW, and Yamaha for their assistance on the project.

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Design and installation of new recording equipment is complete at Packard Hall for the Colorado College Music Department, just in time for their annual Summer Music Festival!

The new system features adjustable microphones on servoreelers, preamps and monitor control from Grace Design, and a Dante network for distribution of audio signals to other spaces in the building.

All this in addition to upgraded room acoustics finishes, improved sound isolation to the hall, and noise control improvements in the recording booth!

Here’s an audio sample we recorded on 16 June 2016:

Dvořák – String Sextet in A Major, Op. 48; I. Allegro moderato

Equipment List

Microphones

• (4) DPA 4011C (on servoreelers)
• (2) Sennheiser MKH8050 (stereo pair on servoreeler)
• (2) AKG 414

Microphone Preamplifiers

• Grace Design m201 with ADC
• Grace Design m802 with Dante card

Recording Interface/DAW

• RME Fireface UFX
• iMac/ProTools 12
• Allen & Heath ICE16 backup recorder

Monitoring

• Grace Design m920
• Genelec 8030B

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“How does it look?” she asked me, a little bit apprehensive.

Rachael West is an Emmy award winning voice talent, actor, host, and model. She approaches her work with dynamic enthusiasm and an obvious passion for quality, and this project to upgrade her ISDN recording facilities was no different.

We had been working together for a few months to develop plans for a new vocal isolation booth, and truth be told, there had been a few setbacks along the way. But despite the challenges, Rachael remained committed to the project, insisting that the acoustics not be compromised.

As it turned out, the acoustics measurements on the custom isolation booth from Noise Barriers, LLC turned out even better than expected. The new level of sound isolation will allow her to focus on her voiceover work free from the distraction of outside noise. Absorption panels carefully fitted to the interior walls control sound inside the booth, and a heavy duty door with dual seals helps to keep noise out.

Only the outside remains to be painted – with a purple racing stripe, naturally!

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Last weekend we had the privilege of recording a series of concerts and rehearsals for Kantorei, one of the premier choral ensembles in the country. The concert entitled “Echoes: Chant & Beyond” included classic works from the choral repertoire, such as “Miserere Mei Deus” by Gregorio Allegri, and took full advantage of the reverberant acoustics at both Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church and Bethany Lutheran Church in Denver. Concertgoers were treated to a true surround sound experience in both of these venues.

Of particular interest at this concert was a new work by Norwegian composer Kim Andre Arnesen. Kantorei has recently named Arnesen as its Composer in Residence for its 2015-2016 season, and performed the USA premiere of “O Sacrum Convivium” in this concert series.

Here’s a snippet of the piece – we hope you enjoy it as much as we did, and we look forward to hearing more!

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Last week we returned to Harris Hall in Aspen to engineer a live broadcast of the Aspen Music Festival and School‘s winter concert series. The concert was a piano recital played by Orli Shaham on a brand new Steinway grand, and the concert was broadcast live on Colorado Public Radio.

An event like this requires the collaboration of several people working behind the scenes – stage manager, piano technician, engineers in Aspen and Denver, production crew, radio announcers, and, of course, ….. the artist!

Command central on the Aspen end looked like this:

Note the venerable Yamaha DM2000 console, and the laptop for monitoring the broadcast stream via CPR’s online music streaming channel. The audio is delivered to CPR’s Denver studio via a dedicated ISDN line, and it is a unique experience to sit in the control room and listen to the audio come back to the laptop via WiFi with only a second or two of delay! Not pictured is the second laptop running Google Chat to allow direct communication with CPR in Denver, so they can be advised of the live action such as stage entrances, houselights, and whether or not the artist is coming back for an encore…

The stage setup looked like this:

At around 500 seats, Harris Hall is a fantastic intimate venue for an event like this. Background noise levels are wonderfully quiet. The acoustics are lively yet warm. Based on our previous experience recording in this hall, the piano technician’s voicing of the new instrument, and Ms. Shaham’s concert repertoire,  we chose a combination of microphones placed at varying distances from the piano. The hanging microphones were Schoeps MK4 capsules in a fixed ORTF configuration, flanked by a widely-spaced pair of Schoeps MK2h omnidirectional capsules on CMC6 bodies. The close mics on stands were DPA 4006-TL omnis, which gave a beautiful sound – clear and transparent – and formed the foundation of the audio mix.

Thanks to the careful preparation and collaboration of the whole production crew, the event went smoothly. We were pleased to be a small part of bringing this wonderful music to a larger audience beyond the concert hall.

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