Sound reinforcement
Sound reinforcement
- « A sound reinforcement system is an electromechanical system for accurately amplifying, reproducing, and sometimes recording audio, so that people not near the original source may experience the sound as if they were. » (WikiPedia)
The choice of those electromechanical systems is done by the artist’s sound engineer for everything related to his tools and instruments. The system engineer chooses the loudspeaker system so that this system is adapted to the venue.
Global approach
- Our global approach for sound reinforcement takes place in three steps :
1) planification and simulation of the loudspeaker system; 2) on-site building of the system; 3) measurement and optimization; We use two specific tools developped by Meyer Sound to achieve steps 1 and 3 of this process. These are the MAPP Online Pro prediction software for simulation and the SIM® 3 audio analyzer for measurement and optimization.
Planification and simulation
In this step, we gather in collaboration with the customer all informations about the venue (type of venue, date, timetables, place, expected audience, artists, technical fact sheets, etc.)
With this data, we evaluate the loudspeaker system to built using a map or a preliminary recognition of the place. Then using the MAPP Online Pro software, we simulate the behavior of this installation. This simulation allows us to correctly place the loudspeakers so that all listeners will have a homogeneous and similar sound.
The following images show the loudspeaker coverage at 1Khz for the Théâtre du Crochetan in Monthey (Switzerland).
This figure shows the frequency response for a listener at about 21m from the stage.
Building the system
Once the simulation is done, we built the system on-site, using the obtained parameters.
Measurement and optimization
- The last step is the measurement with the SIM® 3 audio analyzer. We need to verify the prediction and adjust the parameters dealing with the site particularities.