The newly built 600-seat Berman Centre for the Performing Arts, which is situated inside West Bloomfield’s Jewish Community Centre in Detroit, US, has been equipped with a new sound solution centred on Renkus-Heinz ST4R three-way tri-amped loudspeakers. The theater is designed for flexibility, with movable walls that close to form two adjacent ballrooms, or open to create a single large theater. The pull-out seating can also expand the main room’s 300 seats to 600. “It’s very much a multi-use facility,” explained Advanced Lighting and Sound’s Bob Sullivan, the contractors on the project. “The system had to be adaptable to several different room configurations, and sound good across a wide range of program material.” The main sound system is comprised of left and right arrays of two Renkus-Heinz ST4R three-way tri-amped loudspeakers. CFX212M two-way systems at the rear of the hall act as delays or provide separate coverage, depending on the configuration, while Crown amplifier are used to powers the CFX units. A Yamaha M7CL 48-channel console handles FOH duties, with DSP handled by a Yamaha DME 24N processor. Several more CFX212M boxes provide monitoring on stage. Hamilton says the venue’s relatively low ceiling added another challenge. “It was a bit tricky configuring the arrays to deliver a true stereo image from where we had to position them, but the ST4’s coverage and pattern control made it easier to accomplish.” For visual features, a 28ft Da-Lite screen provides the canvass for a Sanyo PLX70 projector. A matrix of four Sanyo 400-series flat panel displays is used for digital signage, and as a single display for overflow. “The speakers sound great in the room,” says Sullivan. “Coverage is smooth and consistent across the entire area. It’s a very well thought out solution.”
