Jack Singer Gets Jacked Up – Calgary’s Beloved Concert Hall Receives Long-awaited Lobby Sound System Replacement
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Jack Singer Concert Hall is an amazing venue, often lauded as an example of one of the most acoustically advanced concert halls in the world. Before you enter the hall, you experience the beautiful lobby with a soaring ceiling, two floors separated by glass panels that can accommodate up to 1,000 people altogether – which also makes for a very acoustically challenging space when you’re looking to replace its outdated sound system. The current sound system, installed in 2004, was never designed to support music performances, only lobby announcements. As the lobby usage slowly evolved to accommodate more and more live music performances, it became a necessity to replace the system with newer technology.
“The rear of the lobby is split into two floors that can sometimes even be hosting separate events simultaneously,” says Jack Jamieson, Head Sound Technician. “There are also a lot of glass surfaces throughout the lobby placed for aesthetics that can make it very reflective.”
To solve this, a combination of larger loudspeakers were installed in the main area of the lobby, with smaller speakers, each individually accessible, were installed in the rear of the lobby. The large speakers are aimed in and down towards the carpeted lobby floor to avoid unwanted reflections and help isolate the system acoustically from the concert hall.
The Jack Singer Concert Hall lobby doesn’t just act as an entry point to the concert hall. In the past, it’s hosted, many weddings and high-profile events including Avenue Magazine's Top 40 Under 40, Canadian Citizenship Ceremony, and The Rozsa Awards. This meant that special consideration had to be taken when selecting a replacement for the speaker system.
“For a space like Jack Singer Concert Hall lobby, you need a flexible system. It needs to do so much more then communicate show announcements,” says Jamieson. “For the monitor system in the concert hall, the system that we chose has become the first or second choice product listed on most touring riders that we see. So, we had a demo of the product brought in, and all stakeholders agreed that it was one of the best wedge monitors we had ever heard or measured. Further, it was capable of more volume than the largest and loudest cabinet from our previous system. It was a unanimous choice from all of us.”
The lobby sound system replacement is just one part of a larger Jack Singer Concert Hall sound upgrade that will improve the sound of all supported live performances.
With so many of us missing the arts, and the joy it brings to our lives, it’s exciting to think that the Arts Commons we will be returning to will have some much-anticipated upgrades to make our arts experience even better.
