How Pisgah AVL’s Dolby Atmos installation at the University of North Carolina’s Lipinsky Hall is helping to support Asheville’s next generation of audio engineers.
For a small city Asheville is a musical monolith; home to Moog Synthesisers, the esteemed Echo Mountain recording studios and iconic venues such as the Orange Peel and Diana Wortham theatre. The music technology program in at UNCA has played a key role in this by training generations of audio engineers.
When UNCA’s Associate director of Music Technology, Jude Weinberg contacted Pisgah AVL’s Robert Shaffer about overhauling the monitoring system in the Lipinsky Hall mastering suite they decided it was a project they couldn’t refuse. “Nearly half of the Pisgah AVL staff and freelancers are graduates of the Music Technology program, our shows simply wouldn’t happen without them” Robert said.
“Nearly half of the Pisgah AVL staff and freelancers are graduates of the Music Technology program, our shows simply wouldn’t happen without them”
Robert Shaffer – Pisgah AVL
…the elephant in the room was the possibility that the department may be relocated to a new building in subsequent semesters making a fixed installation unlikely to get a green light…
The initial system brief was to update the college’s old monitoring system to a 9.1 Dolby Atmos setup but first a few challenges needed to be overcome. As with many state colleges the initial quote was subject to several stages of approval; however the elephant in the room was the possibility that the department may be relocated to a new building in subsequent semesters making a fixed installation unlikely to get a green light. The elegant solution was to construct a freestanding framework to allow infinite positioning options and to allow easy relocation if required. While there were a plethora of wall mounting options for the chosen JBL speakers there were none that could be mounted directly to the frame work. Pisgah’s Ryan Hargis designed an elegant clamp system that was CNC cut and custom fabricated from heavy duty steel.
At the heart of the monitoring system are three JBL 708i and six 705i Master Reference monitors while the signal processing was provided by a DAD DX32. This setup was chosen to allow for sophisticated control over the sound in the room, facilitating the precise adjustments required by Dolby but also integrating with the college’s existing ProTools and Avid recording software. Ryan Hargis explained these choices “Wether students go on to work in a live sound or studio environment spatial audio is being rapidly integrated in modern audio systems, it was important that this system reflected what students would go on to encounter in the workplace”.
“Wether students go on to work in a live sound or studio environment spatial audio is being rapidly integrated in modern audio systems, it was important that this system reflected what students would encounter in the workplace”.
Ryan Hargis – Pisgah AVL
What made this project particularly special is former UNCA alumni were involved in all aspects of the installation. Ben Bober, Pisgah AVL’s warehouse manager helped to install and cable the system while the final DSP set up was carried out by Daniel Wedge, a live sound engineer who graduated UNCA in 2011 and went on to tour nationally as a front of house engineer. “The system sounds amazing and we’re so glad that former students are coming back to make the department an even better place” said Weinberg.
To find out more about UNCA’s music technology program visit https://www.unca.edu/programs/music-technology/