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Acoustic Systems Soundproofs WDAV
by Kim Hodgson
General Manager
WDAV(FM)
DAVIDSON, N.C. WDAV(FM) is a 24/7 classical music public
radio station in the small college town of Davidson, N.C., serving
the Charlotte metropolitan area.
My love affair with modular studio construction began in April
of 1999, six months before I became WDAV's general manager, when
I attended the NAB convention in Las Vegas. Acoustic Systems had
set up a small room about the size of an announce booth in a noisy
exhibit hall. When I stepped inside and closed the door, every trace
of sound simply vanished. It was a revelation.
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| WDAV celebrates its new facility with a live classical performance
by pianist Jon Nakamatsu and cellist Alan Black. |
A year later I was settling in at WDAV, and we were in the early
stages of planning for a facility to replace the 3,000-square-foot
building, made of cinderblock and sand, we had occupied since the
mid-1980s. Many staff members were doubled up in offices intended
for one person. Our technical facilities, which consisted of two
control rooms on either side of a "studio" that had morphed
into a storage room, were tiny, dark, acoustically porous and technologically
obsolete.
We had tentatively settled on a place to build, a vacant lot on
Davidson's Main Street across the street from Davidson College's
main campus. Our architect: John Burgess of Burgess Design Associates
in Davidson.
John knew the town well and was the perfect architect to design
a building compatible with the historic character of the block.
But he knew little about acoustical design and less about radio
stations.
I remembered how impressed I had been with the Acoustic Systems
display and called my colleague Wally Smith, who had recently used
Acoustic Systems rooms in a new facility he built for NPR station
WLIU(AM) in Southampton, N.Y.
Wally's enthusiastic recommendation was too much to ignore. At
his behest, I contacted Arty Ware, design consultant with Northeast
Communications Concepts. Arty has vast experience designing for
Acoustic Systems installations, and he soon spoke with our architect
and the Davidson College team that would be supervising construction.
We also consulted a local designer of conventional stick-built studios.
After interviewing both men, we thought hard about what we needed.
Our criteria consisted of five completely soundproof rooms, air
control, production control, a modest-sized performance studio and
two small edit rooms with decent acoustics.
We needed daylight in all the rooms and we needed them to be built
to these specs by crews inexperienced with experience installing
this type of facility. In other words, every precaution was taken
to avoid human error in the construction of these critical spaces.
Oh, and did I mention the railroad tracks 50 yards from the technical
wing of the building?
Given these criteria, Acoustic Systems and Northeast Communications
Concepts seemed like the obvious choice. Acoustic Systems guarantees
that its rooms will meet specs, and the rooms are installed in your
space by a skilled crew of specialists in this type of installation.
Our crew came down from Washington, where they had just finished
a gigantic installation for XM Satellite Radio, and really knew
their stuff.
Arty Ware played an invaluable role. Thanks to his knowledge and
obvious credibility, he was able to work with our architect to bring
about significant changes in the basic design of the building -
changes that made the difference between a great facility and a
mediocre one.
Always sensitive to our constraints, Arty successfully argued for
what I would call "right-sized" rooms: large enough to
do the job well, but hardly ostentatious in terms of size or finish.
Construction began in January of 2002, and the Acoustic Systems
rooms were installed in July.
In our case, the five Acoustic Systems rooms together weighed more
than 69,000 pounds. This may sound like a lot, and indeed, the construction
crew added more reinforcement to the concrete slab that underlies
that wing of the building. However, because this is less than the
weight that would have been required to construct to the same specs
using acoustically isolated concrete slabs and stick-built walls,
we actually saved on the structural reinforcing in the technical
wing of the building.
We began broadcasting from WDAV's new facility on Dec. 29, 2002.
Two months later we officially dedicated the building with a live
performance from our 400-square-foot performance studio featuring
Van Cliburn Competition gold medallist Jon Nakamatsu and Alan Black,
principal cellist of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. We used a
small amount of processing to sweeten the sound because the room
was designed to be dead enough for interviews, yet live enough for
classical music recording. The resulting sound exceeded our fondest
hopes.
And so it continues. Our hosts and producers are thriving in these
light-filled rooms, and our on-air sound has improved so much that
even the casual listener can tell the difference. Meanwhile, a diesel
locomotive passes several times a week, blowing its horn or the
nearby crossing, and nobody knows.
Our Acoustic Systems rooms are attractive and functional, a good
description of the whole facility. We won't win any awards for design
innovation, but that was not one of our goals (although if there
were awards for appropriate design, I think we'd be a contender).
There has been a tendency lately for public radio stations building
new facilities to hire big-name (and big-ticket) designers. The
results often are strikingly beautiful. I don't mean to suggest
that these stations have made a mistake. They have chosen a course
which no doubt reflects their ambitions and the depth of their pocketbooks.
But for WDAV, the combination of Acoustic Systems and Northeast
Communications Concepts was the perfect match for our own philosophy
of striving for the highest possible quality while being the best
possible stewards of the resources entrusted to us by the community.
We would do it again in a heartbeat.
For more information from Acoustic Systems, contact the company
in Texas at (512)-444-1961 or visit www.acousticsystems.com.
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