Study Hall

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Merging Science & Art: Can Anyone Catch Up With Systems Engineer Liam Halpin?

Case studies on fully utilizing new technology as an early adopter, even before there’s anything to adopt.

With time alignment being performed with the aid of d&b’s ArrayCalc software and enhanced for the best average response across the whole audience, the subs and J8 hangs themselves all actually acted as part of the sub steering system.

Read with the help of an online viewer, CAD drawings supplied by the venues enabled Halpin to spend less time at each location taking actual measurements with his Leica DISTO S910 laser distance meter while still maintaining a high degree of accuracy.

“Over the course of the tour it became a lot easier for me to extract the measurements I needed from the CAD drawings,” Halpin admits. “I could obtain the heights of the audience areas from the side elevations and much more with incredible accuracy and detail. Just as a crosscheck, we’d take a few select measurements of our own at each location to insure that everything was spot on.”

The full-range cabinets in the flown system received power from d&b D80 amplifiers, and were array processed. Every amplifier, in turn, was connected to a dual, redundant Ethernet network built around Dante-equipped d&b DS10 network bridges falling under OCA control. Lake processing managed signal distribution and house EQ.

“I’ve been incorporating redundancy like this within my designs for the last couple of years,” Halpin concludes. “Although the management tools to guide these capabilities have been available in software, taking advantage of them isn’t something that’s easy for everyone to do. Over time, and with feedback to the manufacturers from early adopters like me, the process will continue to get easier.

“A long time ago a friend of mine told me there are three rules of audio: One, make noise. Two, keep making noise. And three, don’t stop making noise. That’s why redundancy in a system makes sense. I can’t protect against everything, but it makes it as difficult as possible to stop making noise.”

Halpin with his workstation, the right screen is showing Mac OS running Outline Dashboard control software for (Outline) Newton Matrix processors, followed by a Wavetool audio monitoring/solo system from his Focusrite 128-channel (Audinate) Dante PCIe card; he also uses that for multi-tracking when needed.The second screen (located on the right) also switches to be a second monitor for Windows when he needs to expand over one screen, usually for Tuning-Capture Plus or (Rational Acoustics) Smaart, or for doing RF and for monitoring the power through networked power metering. Both screens are touch screens and are set up to work for both Mac and PC.

 

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