Educational Spaces

Coon Rapids High School – Phase One 2019

Coon Rapids High School needed a complete study of their new grand entry hall to understand the effect of the construction materials on the amount of transmissible noise and extraneous conversation on intelligibility during class transitions.

This room has a volume of nearly 232,000 cubic feet and a hard deck height of 48 feet. The study has shown that the room, as designed has an average broadband reverb time of 2.2 seconds, and is relatively smooth in distribution, both in respect to first reflections and decay, but also as to frequency distribution. The structures enclosed within the boundary surfaces supply a reasonable amount of diffusion and scattering, allowing for energy to dissipate fairly well. The predicted reverb time falls within the Chamber Music and Symphonic general desired categories.

Pertinent measures were taken at 5’ AFF (assuming nominal ear elevation), in three logical locations in the main hall. While volume (energy output) of a passing class cannot be predicted, the results follow from a stimulus of approximately 96dB SPL at the S1 speaker location. Similar results were obtained from stimulation at S2 speaker location. Ambient total SPL of the room due to EDT (Early Decay Time) brings the actual energy level to approximately 98 to 103 dB SPL.

Cedar Valley Church 2010

Cedar Valley added a new wing containing three separate projects that required some acoustic modifications; a multi-use gymnasium, a classroom for elementary & middle school students, and a theatre/lecture hall for the upper grades and public performances.

The gymnasium was open to upper floor hallways and common areas, so some extremely durable absorption was specified for the high walls to withstand abuse, and a distributed baffle system to be hung in the roof truss grid to damp the noise in the room making it more controllable and comfortable.

The elementary room required playback of audio & video content as well as lecture sources, and could be configured for seating in multiple ways. Absorption was applied to the ceiling and mechanicals, a suspended cloud system designed, and portions of the rear walls damped for reflections and bass control.

The upper class auditorium is to serve for video playback, lecture, and music performance. Working closely with the architect and interior designer, a compromise design was conceived that provided adequate damping of early decays, left few artifacts, and provided well for contemporary music recital conditions.

Park High School Auditorium 2008

Park High School auditorium needed to be updated acoustically from a hard surface room with the modification of the suspended ceiling clouds in a louvered arrangement and a new sound system modeled and plotted in EASE utilizing a cluster of 3 Danley SH-50 loudspeakers, subwoofers, and front fills.

MacPhail Center for Music 2007

MacPhail Center for Music had already been acoustically and architecturally designed when they requested a model for a multi-use sound system that could be applied to both the thrust stage seating arrangement and also to a much more intimate ‘in-the-round’ configuration.

Three clusters of Danley SH-50’s were modeled for front firing directionality providing coverage for the traditional seating setup, and 4 Danley SH-100b units hung for when the performance was centered, all units being able to combine as necessary.