With boasting rights as the first performance and education complex in America to be built exclusively for jazz, San Francisco’s SFJazz Center opened earlier in 2013. The complex is centred on the Robert N Miner Auditorium, which aims to balance natural acoustics and a sound reinfocement system..

‘SFJazz wanted the ultimate room for musicians to play in, for the audience to listen and for engineers to record,’ says Sam Berkow, founder and principal of SIA Acoustics. ‘To do it all in a relatively small space that allowed flexible seating for up to 700 wasn’t easy.’

Assigned to SIA Acoustics, the design of the audio system and the room’s physical acoustics presented a particular challenge. As the hall’s natural acoustics are designed to carry the stage sound into the audience, this sound system’s role is to augment the stage sound while remaining sonically transparent. With that in mind, Berkow, SFJazz Founder and Executive Artistic Director Randall Kline, and Production Manager Cecilia Engelhart selected Meyer Sound’s Mina loudspeakers for the job. For mixing consoles, Berkow specified an Avid Profile at FOH, an SC48 at monitors and an Icon D-Command feeding a full Pro Tools rig in the recording/broadcast booth.

‘Jazz music is fundamentally about nuance and tone,’ Berkow says. ‘The choice of Avid Venue consoles at the SFJazz Center helps to ensure that the audience – both in the hall and listening in via recording or broadcast – will hear the musical interplay and feel the energy that is so important to jazz.’

‘With Mina, we could be confident that the sound from the speakers would match the sound from the stage,’ he continues. ‘In particular, Mina’s acoustic manifold gives that very soft, silky high frequency sound that brings out the nuances of instruments like saxophones.’

Supporting dual arrays of 16 Mina are five 500-HP subwoofers flown in a three-front, two-rear cardioid array. ‘The sub array works extremely well,’ Berkow notes. ‘It keeps off-axis energy from muddying the sound on stage; something which is extremely important for jazz’.

The complete system also comprises eight Meyer Sound JM-1P arrayable loudspeakers, two UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers and four M1D-SM line array loudspeakers as side, rear, and front fill loudspeakers respectively, and a Galileo loudspeaker management system with two Galileo 616 processors.

‘The sound system is flawless, crystal clear, transparent and perfectly matched to the hall,’ says SFJazz’ Randall Kline after the opening concert. ‘The sounds of the instruments were the most natural I have heard in a hall this size. I especially noticed the vibraphones of Bobby Hutcherson and Stefon Harris, which sounded intimate but powerful.’

The Miner Auditorium audio systems were installed by BBI of San Francisco under the guidance of Principal Mark Roos and Project Manager Pete Maiers. Architect for the SFJazz Center was Mark Cavagnero, and theatrical design was assigned to Len Auerbach of Auerbach Pollock Friedlander.

The SFJazz Center is the new permanent home of SFJazz, a non-profit arts organisation founded in 1983 as Jazz in the City.