The Han Show in Wuhan, China is a venue that seats 2,000 audience members and puts on a water-based spectacle. A complex Meyer Sound system has been deployed at the venue to meet its specific audio needs.
At the Han Show, during the performance, the upper seating area drops down and the lower seating area splits and rotates to the sides to reveal a vast pool for the water-based elements of the show. Because the entire seating layout changes, the show requires two completely separate sound systems under one roof.
The sound system installed was designed by Vikram Kirby of California’s Thinkwell Group, and comprises 359 self-powered loudspeakers that are processed, distributed, and matrixed by a D-Mitri digital audio platform comprising of 53 frames.
Kirby explained the selection of products: “What was critically important for this project was to have a single supplier that could help us scale from very small to huge, and I don’t know of any high-quality manufacturer other than Meyer Sound with such product breadth. We scale all the way from line array hangs to tiny MM-4XPs for front fills, with a need for every size in between—plus special-purpose speakers like the beam-steering CAL column array loudspeaker and the directional SB-2 parabolic wide-range sound beam.†Used for surrounds and localized upstage sources, The Han Show’s nine CAL loudspeakers are the largest deployment of CAL to date for an entertainment application.
Kirby said: “The CALs work wonderfully as lateral surrounds. You get a uniformity of coverage across a wide seating area that you can’t get from point source boxes. The CALs deliver a more complete sound-mapping effect, particularly when moving off-centre.â€
Regarding the performance of the 18 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements, Kirby said: “They are just phenomenal in the way they control the low end. We did a lot of work with the directional steering, and it really helped. The bass sound is very tight for such a large room.â€
Comprising 16 different Meyer Sound loudspeaker models including MICA, MINA, and M’elodie line-array loudspeakers, the massive system is configured as 29 separate subsystems to meet the show’s extraordinary requirements, each with its own dedicated signal matrixing and processing. Managing the system is the D-Mitri digital audio platform controlled by CueConsole user interfaces at two FOH positions and monitors, with the entire system networked across a fibre optic ring. Layout of the network infrastructure was handled by Colbert Davis, associate sound designer, working in collaboration with Extreme Networks.
Loudspeaker drive and array optimization were supplied by a Galileo Callisto loudspeaker management system with eight Galileo Callisto 616 array processors and a Galileo loudspeaker management system with two Galileo 408 processors.
The Meyer Sound systems were provided by Shanghai Broad Future Electro Technology Co., Ltd. and installed by Beijing-based AoTeWei.
Kirby said: “This is undoubtedly the most challenging project I’ve undertaken. It’s not just left, right, subs, and back surrounds—the whole theatre is ringed with loudspeakers. And when you add all the changes that come from a reconfigured auditorium, you have a whole different order of complexity.â€