What makes USU's performance hall 'world class?' Experts dissect perfection

WHISPER-PERFECT: The performance hall's walls of thick concrete, which muffle campus noise, are the first step in building a 'world-class' controlled audio environment. / Photo by Camille Blake

By Aaron Falk

January 27, 2006 | The Manon Caine Russell Kathryn Caine Wanlass Performance Hall opened its doors to the public Jan. 12, prompting those who walk through its doors to generally say the same thing.

"World class."

The folds of the building were inspired by the jagged mountains that provide its backdrop, Vinicius Gorgati, the hall's principal architect, says. It is made mostly of concrete and zinc and glass to contrast with the "world of brick around it."

"At night it is a lantern for the arts district of campus," he says.

But it's the acoustics that have most people talking.

"The first thing you want to do is isolate the outside noise," says Paul Wheeler, an associate professor who teaches a sound system design course at USU.

To limit sound from what Wheeler called "typically a noisy environment," the building's designers constructed the walls out of thick concrete.

Vibrations from the building's mechanical systems are the second point of concern, Wheeler said. Vents underneath every seat in the performance hall ensure that warm or cool air is distributed through a large outlet slowly, and more importantly, noiselessly.

The room itself can even be tuned through the deployment and positioning of an array of curtains and banners. This controls what's known as reverberation time -- the time it takes for a sound to die down 60 decibels, Wheeler said.

For the soft sounds of a piano concerto, Gorgati said the walls are left bare so the music can resonate. For a jazz performance, the banners would be deployed to absorb snare hits, cymbal splashes and the shrieks and trills of a trumpet solo.

While Wheeler said he has not conducted any sound studies on the hall, he did say he thought the room was not perfectly tuned for its ribbon-cutting ceremony Jan. 12.

"For speech you want the reverberation time very low," Wheeler said. "The reverberation time in the room for the ribbon-cutting was too long for the performance they had. The words were kind of muddled together."

The hall is relatively small. It can accommodate up to 22 musicians on its stage and an audience of 421.

Boston's Symphony Hall, which sits a few miles from Gorgati's Massachusetts office, holds more than 1,500 people. Gorgati described it as "one of the three best (buildings) in the world for acoustics." So while quality sound can be achieved on a larger scale, he said, this new recital hall offers something Symphony Hall doesn't: intimacy.

"Even if you sit three rows from the back, you can clearly see the pianist and his movements," Gorgati said. "You can almost see his eyes."

In a smaller hall, Wheeler said, it becomes important to control the first point of reflection.

"If there's a talker or singer, the first sound the listener gets is direct," he said. "The next sound is the first reflection. It bounces of a hard surface to get to the listener."

Wheeler said if the first reflection gets to the listener between 10 and 60 milliseconds, it is perceived as the same sound as the direct sound and contributes to the quality of the performance. But if the first reflection takes longer than that, it is perceived as a different sound -- an echo -- and is detrimental.

The hall's acoustics were tuned to the sounds of local musicians, students mostly, pianists and cellists playing to a room of sparse and scattered ears, making sure their instruments are just as audible in one corner of the room as the other. But the hall received its first real test Jan. 14, during a concert and gala reception.

The next performance will be a faculty recital featuring Marcianne MacKay, soprano, and Lynn Jemison-Keisker, piano. The recital begins at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. General admission tickets are $5. USU students with valid ID are admitted free.

Former USU students Manon Caine Russell and Kathryn Caine Wanlass Performance donated $6.3 million for the project, the largest donation in the history of the university.

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