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One of the best-known performance venues in North America for many years has been Toronto's O'Keefe Centre. Its all-purpose design h as proven to acoustics that were wonderful for some types of productions, and abysmal for others. Well, as of December 1996, the O'Keefe is no more; it is now the Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts. The one-size-fits all acoustics have been replaced as well, by a novel combination of architectural and electronic elements that have deep roots in music recording control room design. Internationally known audio consultant Neil Muncy (of Markham, Ontario's Neil Muncy and Associates), system designer for this project, took your author through this interesting makeover.
The O'Keefe Centre was built in 1960, its construction having been funded by the O'Keefe Brewing Company, and opened with a production of the music Camelot featuring Richard Burton. It was originally conceived as a giant TV studio, for a kind of Canadian equivalent of the Ed Sullivan show. Over the years, it has hosted virtually every type of musical production, including one particularly legendary week in 1967 when the Grateful Dead opened for the Jefferson Airplane at the zenith of the psychedelic era. It has since become the home of the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada, hosted numerous touring mega-musicals, and featured concerts by popular performers running the gamut from the Muppets to k.d. lang. Its modernist architectural design, capacity of 3,223 seats and substantial staging and technical facilities provided an impressive venue for this varied bill of fare. A recent upgrade of the permanent sound reinforcement system to Meyer loudspeakers further enhanced its capabilities. While the Centre has been under municipal management in recent years, with all the uncertainties of funding that entails, it has recently become the beneficiary of a significant grant from Hummingbird Communications Ltd., whi ch motivated the change of name. So, with all this going for it, what was the problem?
The Problem
For the sort of productions that rely on contemporary sound reinforcement techniques, with many mics, high power, and a very high ratio of amplified sound to "off-the-stage" sound, the former O'Keefe worked well, as long as the sound system could produce good quality with the kind of horsepower needed to fill...