The_Dingman
Member
I think I'll take exception to that.
All I noticed in touring schools around Wisconsin was how blanking noisy they were - no attention to background mechanical noise or isolation from adjacent spaces and little to natural acoustics. (Which by the way are phenomenal at McFarland. The orchestra sounded wonderful!)
I can't explain why no one asks your opinion.
You clearly didn't come here. I can't speak for other spaces.
I can say that when I'm mixing, the last thing I want are room acoustics to fight. When we first built our space, the "natural acoustics" were a nice selling point. Especially now that we've upgraded our PA, those "natural acoustics" are our biggest challenge. Room acoustics are great for an orchestra or symphony, but that's such a small piece of how these spaces are actually used, that it creates a lot of difficulty when you can't make the room quiet enough to balance an orchestra with a production. I'd give anything to make our theater more "dead" acoustically - and will probably spend considerably in the next few years to try to get there. It's entirely the reason why we get complaints about volume when we're doing everything we can to make it quieter.
You can look at a space like Overture Hall in Madison that can have world-class natural acoustics for the symphony, but they have dozens of hidden curtains and moving panels to make the room as dead as possible during any other production. Those acoustic deadening features are in place for 90+% of the events that happen in there.
How many solo orchestras are there going to be in McFarland, and how many lectures, productions, dance events, and live music concerts will there be? If orchestral concerts aren't over 50% of the total use of the space, the priority is in the wrong place. That's the one main complaint I have about our theater, what they planned it to be used for is entirely different than what it is actually used for - and almost all those complaints are due to the acoustics and original PA.
With that said, McFarland has one of the most attractive PACs in the area. I absolutely applaud the fact that it's a beautiful design.