February 24, 2018

"Wooden circles in structure of new UW-Madison music hall aren't windows but there to improve acoustics."

The Wisconsin State Journal explains those weird wagon-wheels we've wondered about.
“The acoustical considerations for all three of [the performance] spaces makes for very complicated architecture and mechanics,” said Peter Heaslett, UW-Madison’s project manager. “Just to keep the outside noise out makes it complicated.”

The acoustic system can be altered depending on the type of concert or event in the concert hall, which Heaslett called a “box inside of a box.” Heaslett said the “round windows that aren’t really windows” connect to large, open chambers on each side of the concert hall that will improve the acoustics in the hall....

14 comments:

rhhardin said...

It was a clear day in the concert hall, not a cloud in the ceiling.

- somebody's review of some NYC concert hall with adjustable ceiling reflectors

Bob Boyd said...

And a darn Trump voter wanders into the picture. Typical.

David Begley said...

This type of design really works and makes a huge difference. The acoustics inside Omaha’s Holland Center are fabulous. It used the box inside a box design and other elements too.

madAsHell said...

Gold-plated speaker wires. The Intel 8087 floating point processor. There might be some small percentage of mankind that can actually appreciate the difference. Every one else is lying.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I found the link boring but was directed to this shining gem of an example of Scott Walker's Republican leadership though so not all is lost. Glad to see how well he's running the place.

DougWeber said...

Remember an article in The New Yorker(when it was worth reading) about problems with the symphony hall at Lincoln Center. Problem only seemed to happen in the winter. Turned out that people keeping their coats in their seats destroyed the acoustics of the hall. Had to implement mandatory coat check. This acoustic stuff is hard. More art than science still.

Wince said...

Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s had a set for the musical guest that had a large, similarly shaped slow moving fan as a visual kinetic prop in the background.

In some cases it seemed they metronomically matched the speed of the fan's movement to a beat of the song.

R.E.M. in 1991

Easier to see with Bill Berry's steady beat, harder to detect with the changing tempo of Sweet Emotion.

Aerosmith in 1993

And slowed way down for Shannon Hoon.

Blind Melon 1994

tcrosse said...

Remember an article in The New Yorker(when it was worth reading) about problems with the symphony hall at Lincoln Center.

There was a New Yorker cartoon at the time which showed a couple seated at the back of the hall during a concert, with the orchestra in full cry. One whispers to the other that the acoustics are terrible. Everyone in the hall glares at them to shush them.

Ann Althouse said...

I remember that New Yorker article.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

I teach Industrial troubleshooting and have some similar e amples to the coats. That is, look for patterns of when problems happen. They are seldom random. There is always a cause.

Find the cause and you find the solution.

The concert hall example sounds interesting and I would like to add it to my presentation.

Anybody have a link?

John Henry

glenn said...

We were in the LaScala Museum several years ago. You get to visit a box on the third or fourth level of the hall. Couple of stagehands were putting a piano in place for a concert. Every word they said to each other was perfectly clear. In an impenetrable Milanese dialect but clear as a bell. And not a computer or analayzer in sight. Just the architect.

tcrosse said...

Anybody have a link?

Google 'David Geffen Hall Acoustics' for some articles on the subject. After several re-works ( and re-namings ) since the 1970's, they're still wrestling with it.

Anthony said...

When Davies Symphony Hall opened in San Francisco, the sound was terrible. They ended up installing giant suspended contact lenses from the ceiling to fix the problem. They've since replaced the contact lenses with square daggers of curved plastic.

Meanwhile, the buskers on the corner sound pretty good even though their backs are to me. They identified the car alarm as being in Emin.

Narayanan said...

I saw ad for policy analyst for WI SC? Are courts becoming think-tank?