Spectacular 360° views of the Hudson River and Manhattan Skyline, provide the backdrop to a new interconnectable event space in New York City – The Glasshouse.
Able to accommodate almost 2,000 people, and with multiple outdoor terraces set within its 75,000sq-ft footprint, the venue required a production infrastructure, including transparent audio transmission, video and lighting and broadcast-ready cabling to serve its intended purpose. The work went out to tender, and the successful bidder was Martin Audio partner, Audible Difference (ADI).
‘We were offered the contract based on our design, and the fact that Martin Audio system offered a robust and adaptable Dante platform,’ says ADI principal, Erich Bechtel.
Bechtel’s colleague, Ian Ruben-Schnirman, ADI’s Director of Technical Services, was responsible for overseeing the fit-out of the former warehouse building. The Glasshouse itself occupies the 5th floor and the 6th (the event space, VIP rooms and kitchen), which are entirely new additions to the building.
The stage area pop-up space on the 7th floor takes advantage of additional ceiling height, and is equipped with two hangs of eight Martin Audio MLA Compact, with LF extension provided by eight DSX-F subs, four per side, which can be deployed as necessary.
To deliver an adaptable space suitable for private hire, live events, party planners, weddings and so on ADI needed to create an environment which could be reconfigured ‘in a virtually infinite number of ways, with recallable presets, enabling them to change events faster’.
ADI knew that a powered system would offer them the necessary flexibility. ‘MLA makes sense here because of the optimisation potential – we could avoid hitting glass, and at the same time could steer the sound and achieve total rear rejection,’ Ruben-Schnirman explains.
Aside from mitigating the reverberance created by the glass and concrete surfaces of the space, the solution also maintains intelligibility and audio quality, while being sufficiently flexible to be deployed in several different ways as the room changes shape.
Ruben-Schnirman was also impressed by MLA’s consistent coverage. ‘This was especially important in a space like this which is essentially a large concrete box. Wherever the sound is arrayed, you hear no difference whatsoever. I don’t think any other system would have worked.’
In addition, ‘The ability to control the audio within the wider space with a distributed audio system was paramount, but with ceiling speakers they wouldn’t have been able to do what they wanted to do. So we moved them up to CDD-Live 8 and ran everything over Dante,’ he says. ‘By keeping the sound digital we managed to avoid thousands of feet of cable.’
With the specification agreed, via an AC line they were able to test every loudspeaker quickly – before the main power cables were in. ‘One of the features [of CDD-Live 8] is the large LED indicator light on the front of the cabinet under the grille. When you have 63 boxes up in the air you can turn these lights on, and it makes trouble shooting much easier.’
The 63 white CDD-Live 8 mounted in the ceiling as a distributed system are complemented by a further 12 black CDD-Live 8 variously detailed for front fill duties, deployment on the terraces and as compact stage monitors. Four SXP118 subwoofers provide LF extension.
Another consuderation was the control element offered by the Dante solution. ADI turned to Martin Audio’s proprietary DX4.0 network system controller, which handles most of the tuning and U-Hub to feed digital audio to the MLA array via a single cable. ‘This enables the hangs to remain isolated when we move equipment around the room, allowing for the variability of the space.’
Furman power conditioning and bespoke rack supply – offering cable routing panels with integrated D-ring – kept the installation neat and allowed all four racks housing the DX4.0 and U-Hub to be flown. ‘This was important as it offers maximum flexibility as the rooms change.’ Room combining is via a third-party device.
With the intervention of Covid-19, the contract was drawn out over 18 months, eventually only completing in September. The integrators were supported by Martin Audio Product Support Engineer, Joe Lima. ‘Joe was invaluable,’ says Ruben-Schnirman. ‘He looked over the design remotely, and he and I did the system teching.’
Another key member of Martin Audio’s US team was North-eastern Regional Sales Manager, Martha Callaghan, who campaigned energetically to help secure the contract and diligently support it every step of the way.
Both the ADI executives are delighted with the outcome and the fact that their decision to back a CDD-Live 8/MLA combination has been vindicated.
More: https://martin-audio.com
