Anyang Cultural Art Foundation renovates to the sound of d&b.
The Anyang Culture Art Foundation, located in Anyang, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea, was founded to elevate the city’s cultural welfare and urban identity by expanding opportunities for the creation and enjoyment of the cultural arts.
The foundation, which aims to enhance the city’s competitiveness as an entertainment destination, has been playing a major role in creating 'Culture-oriented City Anyang' through various performance exhibitions, cultural art projects, and professional facilities.
The Gwanak Hall System Upgrade Plan
The Anyang Art Center was opened in December 1989 as the Anyang Culture and Arts Center. Since 2000, the facility has been continuously renovated and expanded to provide the foundation for the modern theater. The theater was renamed 'Anyang Art Center' after massive remodeling from 2009 to 2010.
The Anyang Art Center is a multi-purpose cultural space with multiple mixed performance venues, including the grand Gwanak Hall theater, a small performance hall, and an outdoor concert hall. Gwanak Hall recently underwent a much-needed upgrade and remodeling of the theater’s main sound system.
According to Kim Dong-Hyun, director of the sound team at Anyang Art Center, there has been little replacement and reinforcement of the sound system since its opening, more than 30 years ago. Over the years, he has brought in some new components such as a larger mixer, wireless microphones, and some stage infrastructure. Still, because of the relatively high cost, the loudspeaker system has remained largely unchanged. This opportunity led to the replacement of the theater speaker system, and all the systems in the theater now boast d&b loudspeaker setups.
Overcoming structural issues
With this type of acoustic environment, the team had to consider all the potential acoustic distortion within the space, including the side and rear walls, the balcony, and the lighting structure. The main sound system was designed in an Left /Centre/Right configuration. The L/R speakers are V-Series line arrays and center Y-Series line arrays.
The d&b V-Series is a 10-inch, 3-way system that consists of two 10-inch low drivers, one 8-inch mid driver, and two 1.4-inch high drivers. The center speaker is a d&b Y-Series line array. The Y-Series is a 10-inch, two-way system that consists of two 8-inch low drivers and a 1.4-inch, high driver.
With unprecedented low frequency extension and headroom, unparalleled broadband output, and an impressive cardioid dispersion pattern over the entire operating frequency range, d&b line arrays answer both the sound reinforcement and noise control needs of any venue. A complete package of accessories and software teams up with the d&b amplification and workflow platform for built in efficiency from start to finish.
In addition, eight E8 speakers were used as front fills, and eight E8 speakers were installed for the under-balcony rear section. Eight M4 monitor speakers are used on stage.
“Interestingly, the front fill speaker does not have a fixed space,” said Seol. “We provided dedicated stands that can easily adjust the height of the speaker and the angle of up and down so that the speaker can eliminate the obstacles to the viewer's view when the front fill is placed on the stage.”
With the movement of the center section in mind, the sound team wanted a way to adjust the sound without having to tune the system for each performance physically.
“The theater wanted to remotely monitor and adjust the current state of the installed speaker, even after the speaker system was installed, to keep it in the optimal position (height, angle),” added Seol.
According to Henry Lee, a Manager of d&b audiotechnik Korea, who is in charge of system tuning and design, d&b ArrayProcessing was applied to the L/C/R speakers. “For the main system at Gwanak Hall, the processing was done using FIR and IIR filters in a single cabinet with Array Processing, and the ArryaCalc simulation program provides a level and frequency response suitable for the audience geometry. We can increase the overall coherence of the subwoofer speaker and the line array speaker, and give the audience a consistent response characteristic.”
Deploying the latest technology
In Gwanak Hall, the mixing console is a Midas ProX, which is based on the AES50digital audio network. The theater chose the most common DANTE as the main signal transmission format for the digitization of all signals during the main system remodeling process. Therefore, the AX50 and DANTE option cards were added to ProX's external DSP Neutron to enable all signals to be transmitted and received via Dante audio, centered around the Dante Switch Hub.
The main d&b speaker system uses the DS10 audio network bridge. It is installed on the upper and lower stages to transmit signals. Although Dante was set up as the underlying infrastructure, the amplifier input was dualized between digital and analog to ensure signal stability, so that if there was a problem with the digital input signal, it could be automatically switched to the analog input signal. Analog and digital signals can be input at the same time. Using d&b ArrayProcessing and the Cardioid subwoofer, it was possible to control the low frequency energy behind the stage and in the audience area.
The optional ArrayProcessing function within the ArrayCalc simulation software incorporates powerful filter algorithms that calculate and optimize the sonic performance of a d&b line array over an entire listening area.
The center was the first venue in Korea to use d&b’s ArraySight technology also. The ArraySight sender Unit has a built-in temperature and humidity sensor that can be monitored by the R1 software and provides a flexible interface to compensate for air absorption according to temperature and humidity. d&b has also provided real-time high-frequency compensation called Temperature Humidity Control (THC). These features make it easy to apply high-frequency compensation for atmospheric conditions.
