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June 2015

Dr. Phillips Center for the

Performing ArtsOrlando’s stunning new venue

Dr. Phillips Center for the

Performing ArtsOrlando’s stunning new venue

Dr. Phillips Center for the

Performing ArtsOrlando’s stunning new venue

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Berklee College of Music’s New Complex

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ALSO:

Ariana Grande on Tour

Theatre Sound Explained

Berklee College of Music’s New Complex

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Audio-Technica System 10 PRO Digital Wireless System

ALSO:

Ariana Grande on Tour

Theatre Sound Explained

Berklee College of Music’s New Complex

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82 • June 2015 • Lighting&Sound America

Founded in 1945, by the pianist, composer, and arrangerLawrence Berk, Berklee College of Music is the first educa-tional institution in the US to teach jazz. (Its first honorarydoctorate went to Duke Ellington.) Since then, it hasexpanded to include other forms of popular music, as wellas such subjects as film scoring, electronic production anddesign, and the world’s first college-level songwriting major.(More recent majors include video game scoring.)

Last year, Berklee opened what the Boston Globe notedwas its first facility built from the ground up. Located at 160Massachusetts Avenue, it includes, the newspaper said,“369 student beds across 173 dormitory rooms, a 400-seatdining hall that doubles as a performance space, 23 prac-tice rooms, six 2-story common areas, a fitness center, anda 14,000-sq.-ft., ten-studio music production complex.” In astatement, Roger Brown, the school’s president, said,“Goethe called architecture ‘frozen music’ and this buildingis alive with musical resonance. The oscillating windows onthe lower floors are like a percussion bed over which theserpentine red walls in the cafeteria float like a melody. Thepolyrhythms of the five- and four-pane windows create avisual syncopation worthy of the music being made inside.”

The building, designed by William Rawn Associates, isdistinguished by the floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlookingMassachusetts Avenue, offering a view of the 21,400-sq.-ft.400-seat Berklee Café, which serves both as a student din-ing hall and live performance venue. (The room is also dis-tinguished by 38'-high ceiling and curved balcony.) Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG) consulted on the acoustics ofthis commanding space and on all ten of the studios locat-ed within the two lower levels.

“WSDG has not only designed many of the world’s beststudios, they closely monitor the smallest constructiondetails to insure that they are built to impeccable stan-dards,” says Brown. “We are delighted with the outcome,both in the studios they designed for our campus inValencia, Spain and with this new suite of studios in our 160Massachusetts Avenue building. Berklee students deservethe best, and now they have the best.”

The Tower of MusicBy: David Barbour

The building, designed by William Rawn Associates, is distin-guished by floor-to-ceiling windows.

Berklee College of Music gets a new facility, completewith combinationcafé/performance space

TECHNICAL FOCUS: ARCHITECTURE

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Copyright Lighting&Sound America June 2015 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html

John Storyk, of WSDG, says thatthe building presented several chal-lenges: “The primary issue was thedense and complicated programming.A great deal of technology needed tobe packed into a finite amount ofspace. All of the studios are in thetwo-story basement. The first fourfloors feature the entrance lobby; abeautiful staircase leads to the three-story cafeteria/performance hall,which, thanks to fine-tuning and theapplication of appropriate acousticaltreatments, sounds amazingly accu-rate. Directly above the cafe are 25practice rooms. The 12-story towerserves as the residential dormitory.The original plan called for three sub-basement floors, going down almost60', to provide the needed studios. Westarted programming along those linesbut discovered early on that we could

only go 45' before running intotremendous water issues.” (Berklee isin Back Bay, which is built on landfill.)

“Also,” says Storyk, “for us, thechange from cafeteria to performancehall happened in midstream. RogerBrown’s vision all along was that itwould be a cafeteria that couldbecome a jazz performance area. Ithink that, as the space developed ini-tially, not enough attention was paid toits acoustics. Another group wasworking on it; we were brought in todesign the studios, and then the cafe-teria was added to our scope.”

Storyk explains that the brief withthe room was that “it shouldn’t soundlike a cafeteria. During the day, thespace is filled with tables, and it getsvery crowded. At night, for shows,they clear the tables out and a theatri-cal lighting grid and stage boxes come

in. But even when you walk into thatspace, say just to have a sandwich,you can feel that it sounds different.The reverb time goes down and thereare no harsh, anomalous reflections,even though there is so much glassand metal. This is because behind theperforated metal walls [seen at the topof the room in the photo above] weinstalled a variety of acoustical treat-ments. We also modeled the spacewith acoustic-prediction software, justas we do in complex recording studiodesign. Our partner/GM Europe, DirkNoy, and project engineer, GabrielHauser, both based in WSDG’s Baseloffice, ran extensive auditory simula-tion and modeling tests to establishoptimal acoustics for the performancecafé, studios, and critical listeningenvironments,” Storyk says.

The space is equipped with a com-

www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • June 2015 • 83

The cafeteria becomes a performance space at night. The perforated metal walls at the top contain a variety of acoustical treatments.

84 • June 2015 • Lighting&Sound America

TECHNICAL FOCUS: ARCHITECTURE

bination of Meyer Sound UPQ andUPJ loudspeakers, fed through aGalileo loudspeaker management sys-tem. Control is via a Yamaha CL5, withmicrophones supplied by a variety ofmanufacturers.

Storyk notes that, throughout thebuilding, isolation was a big challenge:“The cafeteria is one floor above thestreet entrance, but we still have todeal with isolation. And we had to iso-late the various studios from eachother. Isolated concrete floors withsand-filled masonry walls and decou-

pled metal stud sheetrock partitionsprovided a very effective solution.Some rooms are spring-loaded andothers have advanced room-within-room construction.”

On Level A, the 2,200-sq-ft. Studio1 features a 1,300-sq.-ft., 13'-high liveroom for orchestras of up to 50 musi-cians. It’s a recording/mixing suite witha 600-sq.-ft control room and two110-sq.-ft. isolation rooms. To allayfears that students would be distract-ed by the panoramic view of the liveroom, the window was fitted with clear

glass Quadratic Residue Diffusers,which are custom-built treatments cali-brated to diffuse the studio’s frequen-cy range. They enhance the liveroom’s acoustics while keeping theexpansive view for visitors. The controlroom features an AMS Neve 88RSconsole; spears from ATC, JL Audio,Yamaha, and Genelec; a BSS LondonBlu-160 DSP, along with a variety ofoutboard gear; and Avid Pro Toolsrecording hardware. The live room fea-tures mics and DI from AEA, AKG,Audio-Technica, Beyer, Brauner, Coles,DPA, Electro-Voice, Neumann, Royer,Sanken, Schoeps, Shure, Yamaha,Radial, and Avalon.

At 1,500-sq.-ft., Studio 2 isdesigned for smaller ensemble record-ing projects; it features a 120-sq.-ft.isolation booth and 360-sq.-ft. controlroom. It has the same AMS Neve con-sole with a mix of loudspeakers fromGriffin, Yamaha, ATC; dbx 4280 mainmonitor processing; ProTools record-ing; and a similar mix of mics in thelive room.

Level A also features one of two120-sq.-ft. central machine rooms.“The machine rooms on each floor arepositioned, one on top of the other,”Storyk says. “The racks in thoserooms are mostly associated with thestudios on their specific floor, but notentirely. Think of it as one room verti-cally divided into two. We also includ-ed some satellite machine room loca-tions, small rack closets, which arepart of the central machine room dia-gram.” All of these were the purview ofJudy Elliott-Brown, WSDG systemsdesign and integration specialist, whosupervised the system installationcrew led by Redco Audio, of Stratford,Connecticut.

Level B is comprised of five inde-pendent suites of varying size and pur-pose. Created for small ensemblerecording, the 1,100-sq.-ft. Studio 3features a 320-sq.-ft. control room,140-sq.-ft. isolation booth, and 600-sq.-ft. live room. Its control room has aSSL Duality SE console, with loud-speakers from ATC, JL Audio, and

Control Room 1.

Control Room 3.

Yamaha, plus BSS London Blu-160signal processing, and, in the isolationbooth, a mix of microphones similar tothose mentioned above.

Perhaps surprising is the presenceof so many analog consoles in theserooms. “Interestingly enough,” saysStoryk, “the majority of today’s com-mercial recording studios are 100%digital. Some don’t even have con-trollers anymore. Basically, Pro Toolschanged the game with its digitalaudio work stations. Since that’swhere most of the students are goingto end up, we supplied DAWs withcontroller surfaces in the smallerrooms. But, to teach the basic funda-mentals of audio recording, there’s stillnothing like an analog chain. If youlook at the top schools in the US,you’d be surprised how many of themturn to analog consoles or hybrids.”

WSDG partner/project managerRomina Larregina refers to the 400-sq.-ft. mastering/critical listening labas a “self-contained sweet spot. Theprecise acoustic tuning of this studioprovides classes of up to 12 studentswith an impeccable listening experi-ence, one which will be difficult tomatch in the real world.”

Also on Level B is the 700-sq.-ft.Dolby Atmos-ready dubbing stage,which features twin 150-sq.-ft. isola-tion booths and a 120-sq.-ft. overdubbooth. This features an Avid System 5console, with loudspeakers from JBL,ATC, and Yamaha; BSS London Blu160 processing; Lab.Gruppen amps;and mics from AKG, Brauner, DPA,Electro-Voice, Neumann, Royer,Sanken, Schoeps, Sennheiser, Shure,Avalon, and Countryman.

The 1,400-sq.-ft. production controlsuite features four 170-sq.-ft. controlrooms, three of which are equippedwith 100-sq.-ft. isolation booths, alladjacent to a communal 400-sq-ft.lounge.

The 7,454-sq.-ft. fourth floor isdedicated to practice and rehearsal.Three conjoined, 250-sq.-ft. ensemblepractice rooms were constructed withpro studio isolation and acoustic treat-

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86 • June 2015 • Lighting&Sound America

TECHNICAL FOCUS: ARCHITECTURE

ments to enable musicians to practiceat peak volume without concern forsound leakage into neighboring rooms.Twenty individual practice rooms ofvarying size were designed to accom-modate a diverse range of rehearsalconfigurations. The fourth floor alsohouses a student fitness room.

WSDG co-principal/interior designerBeth Walters, and WSDG interiordesign supervisor Silvia CamposMolho collaborated with BerkleeCollege of Music assistant VP CarlBeatty on the overall 160 Mass. interi-or design. “VP Beatty suggested intro-ducing subtle inflections of color to‘warm and refine’ the atmosphere. Tofacilitate this goal, we developed acustom palette to compliment the col-lege’s distinctive red-and-black motif,”Walters says.

Walters describes the three-yeardesign/construction mission as “an

exceptional opportunity for WSDG tocollaborate with brilliant clients and anoutstanding architectural firm. Ourchallenge was compounded by thefact that we were simultaneouslyengaged in integrating our design forBerklee’s five-studio Valencia Campus,in Spain. The major differencesbetween these two projects were scaleand location. Berklee Valencia is setwithin the ultra-modern Palau de lesArts Reina Sofia arts/performancecomplex, a world-renowned building.Boston’s four-floor, 52,654-sq.-ft.audio education complex is the hub ofa 16-story, ground-up building.Virtually every member of our interna-tional team made a meaningful contri-bution to both of these formidableendeavors. It is extremely gratifying towalk through 160 MassachusettsAvenue today, and know that WSDGhelped to bring it to life.”

Storyk concludes, “Projects on thisscale are extremely rare,” adding thatmembers of the administrative staff atBerklee “are among the most astuteand forward-thinking educators wehave ever worked with. Their insightsand recommendations were invalu-able, particularly in proposing the caféas a performance/live recording space.A brilliant decision, albeit one whichpresented considerable acousticdesign challenges at that stage of theproject. However, their presciencereflects a unique grasp of studentneeds. And the café was immediatelyrecognized as the jewel in the 160Mass. crown. Berklee College of Musichas introduced a new standard of pro-fessionalism and commitment to arapidly evolving career path. WSDGwas privileged to contribute to this sig-nificant addition to America’s educa-tional infrastructure.”

Rehearsal Studio 1.