Miller Outdoor Theater - Houston, TX
May 10, 2010 - Published by ElectroVoice.com

A fixture in Houston’s Hermann Park for over 80 years, the Miller Outdoor Theatre has continued to change in step with the city it serves, growing from a small bandstand to become one of the finest municipal venues in the U.S. A new Electro-Voice XLC sound system with state-of-the-art FIR-drive (FIR filter-based system processing) is ensuring the theatre sounds better than ever for the array of events it hosts, ranging from rock concerts to musical theatre to performances by the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

The City of Houston worked with a team of theatre sound experts to address every facet of the installation and, rather than being hired by a general contractor after the fact, each member of the team was involved from day one. AV systems integrators Hairel Enterprises (led by project manager Rob Slaughter) partnered with consultant/system designer Jonathan Laney (for Jaffe Holden) and Houston-based architects Studio Red (who served as general contractors on the project), working closely with Electro-Voice to design and build a sound system to truly elevate the entertainment experience at this unique venue. Representatives from each company described the process.

"First and foremost, this was a highly effective approach for a municipal project, having all the various parties working so closely together from the beginning,” says Rob Slaughter. “This was a fine example of how assembling the right team can more thoroughly address the needs and expectations of the end-user. The theatre needed a new system to provide better coverage and intelligibility, and we looked at EV’s XLC line array system first for a number of reasons.”

“We had a great team – it couldn’t have been better,” says Jared Wood of Studio Red. “We all entered the project at the same time, and all three companies involved have a lot of experience working on theatre projects. Working collectively on a design/build job like this, we were all able to focus on different details according to our areas of expertise. All this made this project as a whole go very smoothly and quickly. The City of Houston is very, very pleased with how well things went. We’re thinking about working with this kind of team again in the future; it seems more in step with the way the business is going, changing from the traditional process of bidding a job out and then hiring contractors after the fact. And, of course, with a team of this caliber the end product is sure to sound phenomenal.”

St. Martin's Episcopal Church - Houston, TX
Published by ClearOne.com

St. Martin’s Episcopal Church has been a landmark fixture in the Houston area since its establishment in the 1950s by The Rev. J. Thomas Bagby. The church grew from its initial humble beginnings, and by the 1990s, St. Martin’s had become one of the largest Episcopal churches in the United States.

With the construction of the New Church building, implementing a reliable, high-quality audio system became a high priority. Proper amplification in the building was paramount, as the large space is very reverberant, typical of large Gothic spaces. Sermons and readings are delivered from multiple locations, including the main pulpit, a reading lectern, the altar, and the chancel area. The choir area also required microphones to cover soloists or cantors.

There was also a requirement to route audio between the New Church, the Parish Hall, and the Old Church, so that sermons could be simulcast into both locations for purposes of handling overflow. The system needed to carry not only the voice of the clergy member delivering the sermon, but also properly pick up the audio from the choir, the organ, and other ambient audio in the room so that members seated in the other facilities could enjoy the full service as if they were seated in the New Church.


St. Martin’s enlisted the services of John Prohs of Shen Milsom Wilke to design the AV system for the New Church and Bagby Parish Hall and Ewart “Red” Wetherill oversaw the acoustics. Hairel Enterprises, a Texas-based AV integrator, was commissioned to provide additional design and installation services. Kelly Hannig, Director of Sales Support Engineering for ClearOne, also provided on-site consulting and configuration assistance. John Prohs chose to specify ClearOne’s PSR1212 sound reinforcement solution for audio routing and distribution for both the New Church and the Parish Hall.


Hairel installed an ambient audio microphone by the choir area in the New Church, which picks up audio from the choir, organ, and other ambient room sound. Audio from this microphone is routed to the recording system or to the Parish Hall and/or Old Church, without being re-broadcast back into the New Church. The other microphones in the room are routed back to the line array speakers in the main hall, as well as to the remote locations. The powerful capabilities of the builtin audio mixer of the PSR1212, which are easily configured with ClearOne’s G-Ware software, allow any input to route to any output, facilitating this particular application.

Long Center for the Performing Arts - Austin, TX
Dec 30, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ellen Lampert-Gréaux - Published by LiveDesignOnline.com

Located on the shores of Lady Bird Lake with enticing views of the Austin, TX skyline, the new Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Center For Performing Arts incorporates materials from an older building that was partially demolished — the outdated Palmer Auditorium built in 1959 — and reused more than 65% of the materials in the construction of the new venue (and 95% of the debris was reused here of elsewhere rather than becoming landfill). This is not only environmentally intelligent, but also had a large impact on the budget, giving Austin a major performing arts center for a fraction of the cost of an entirely new building.

Mark Holden, principal acoustician of JaffeHolden, took the lead on the acoustics for Dell Hall, collaborating with FDA and the architects. “The goal was to create an outstanding facility with superb acoustics for the symphony, ballet, and opera,” says Holden. As a result, Holden used all the tricks he learned in 30 years as an acoustician to come up with innovative, low-cost solutions for Dell Hall, yet have a flexible “tunable” facility to meet multiple needs, from natural acoustic events to Broadway musicals.

The sound system is cleverly hidden behind black grillwork that surrounds the proscenium arch. “It is completely integrated into the architecture, as they didn't want large loudspeakers hanging in full view during orchestra concerts,” says Holden. Hairel Enterprises provided all audio equipment.