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[Corey Scogin]

Since the topic is hot, here's a hypothetical question for the group:

Say, for example, I have a shallow but wide room.  Seating is divided into 3 sections left, center, right.  Sight lines dictate speaker clusters must be hung inline with the aisles between sections Left & Center and Right & Center. 

Would it be acceptable to install a 2-speaker cluster on each side where the outside speakers covered the Left and Right seating sections in mono and the inside speakers both covered the center section in stereo?  

Granted, people in the outside sections wouldn't hear exactly the same thing as people in the center section but everything should be heard in each of the three sections whether a source is panned or not.

[Ivan Beaver]

Gotcha. So in theory LCR doesn't work in this room either right? Sorry I am still learning all this.

Is there any way we can redo the setup with the existing speakers? Or do we need new speakers to do the mono clusters with side fills that was recommended in the thread earlier?

Knocking down walls ain't gonna happen. lol. hell, half the people don't even think there's a problem.

Nobody said LCR would not work.  It just has to be done right-and it would not work with the current setup by simply adding a center speaker.

It is a possibility-by moving the L/R cluster and installing a center cluster/system.

But the real question is-is the Church willing to spend the money?  If not-then it is a waste of time doing a design.  And before any would start a proper design-then need to know what sort of budget is available.  And that has to include possibly new steel for new speaker hangs (we have no idea what there is to hang from now)-possibly larger conduit sizes (again something we know nothing about) etc.  You need to be sure to plan on money for hiring somebody knowledgeable to do a proper system alignment.

In my opinion it SHOULD be the person who designed the system and is responsible for the performance.  If it is not-then you can end up with a lot of "finger pointing" for why it doesn't work.

Based on what I have read so far-I would FIRST spend money on a proper acoustic design and install.  THEN see how things are.

But taking "fancy approaches" to the sound system are a waste of time in a acoustically bad room.

Do not expect electronics to fix an acoustic problem.

[Ivan Beaver]

Since the topic is hot, here's a hypothetical question for the group:

Say, for example, I have a shallow but wide room.  Seating is divided into 3 sections left, center, right.  Sight lines dictate speaker clusters must be hung inline with the aisles between sections Left & Center and Right & Center. 

Would it be acceptable to install a 2-speaker cluster on each side where the outside speakers covered the Left and Right seating sections in mono and the inside speakers both covered the center section in stereo?  

Granted, people in the outside sections wouldn't hear exactly the same thing as people in the center section but everything should be heard in each of the three sections whether a source is panned or not.

I have done that a number of times.  It is hard to provide true stereo to all the seats.  So the outside seats have a summed mono-so they still get all the information. 

It is when you lose information that I have an issue with.

Here is a link to a system just like that, that I did the alignment on about a month ago.

It is a 2300 seat room with balcony.  A single speaker for the left/right (with a down fill which is hung above the main speaker) and then a fill speaker on the outside of each of the mains for the summed mono for the seats down front on the outsides.  There is a single sub in the room also-so 7 cabinets total for the PA in the room.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=599639733431756&set=vb.126113687424773&type=2&theater

[Brad Weber]

I have already contacted 4 companies in the Houston area including CTSI, HPF Acoustical, Russ Berger, and Bai Austin. Any other ones you guys know of?

I have to get the payment for the acoustical design approved by the board asap and have the company start on the design for the treatment. At this point, this seems like the most logical thing to do. Treat the room, and then see how things sound.

Looks like some good consulting firms that should be able to discusss your situation with you and help you put together a plan of action.  However, the room and system already being in place will almost certainly affect their options and approaches to any treatments and the treatments recommended are also likely to be more costly to implement at this point in time.
 
I find that many people associate mono, stereo, LCR, etc. to the physical speaker arrangement.  While there are indeeed common basic speaker component configurations associated with each approach what is really being addressed is what is heard by the listeners.  For example, there's a lot more to getting all listeners to actually perceive "stereo" from a speaker system than just having left and right speakers.  Here's some interesting general speaker system format discussion from our friends at Acoustic Dimensions, http://www.acousticdimensions.com/ADtools_multichannel.html.  Note the comments in the details for each system regarding the goals for coverage of the individual speaker system elements.
 
The response you received regarding the modeling seems to dance around actually answering the question.  It sounds like the modeling was performed by JBL rather than the Contractor and perhaps your Contractor does not understand the issue sufficiently to actually answer your question or get the information from JBL.  For a stereo system I would like to see the coverage for each individual channel as well as the system with both channels on and interference turned on in order to assess the expected results with center panned mono sources.  Averaging the results over a wider bandwidth can also 'hide' many frequency related issues, you may see the results in terms of the overall SPL with a wide bandwidth source but not what happens in terms of the frequency response throughout the listener area or what happens at certain frequencies.

[Justin Philip]

Brad, that link was very helpful. Wish I had seen it before the install. It seems like Corey's suggestion of adding a mono mix on the outer sections is how acousticdimensions have it shown on the site.

Ivan, in terms of ease of install/money ..is that a more reasonable option than starting over and doing another setup such as mono point source or distributed?

And yes..I am def. in the process of getting a company in the facility to have them evaluate and give us their recommendations. At this point I can't do any major renovations like break down walls, so treating the room is about as good as I can get.

A lot of this would have been prevented had our first consultant stay on the project and we should have replaced a consultant with a consultant..not a design/install company. Hindsight is 20/20.

[ProSoundWeb Community]