With a record of providing first-rate education, the Miami Country Day School (MCDS) attracts the children of Miami’s performing arts and music celebrities, among others. Keeping the performing arts and music departments on their toes, its unusually high standards were reflected in a multipurpose amphitheater completed recently.
Initially, MCDS could only find sound designers and installers who were either too busy to give the system the attention it deserved or wanted to design sound systems that were so complicated they seemed capable of launching a tactical military strike. In the end, HED South partnered with Michael Chafee Enterprises to meet the school’s needs without going ballistic. ‘The objectives were clear,’ says HED South Principal, Jan Vitrofsky. ‘The system had to look clean, perform simply yet flexibly, and sound fantastic.’
Chafee specified two One Systems 312CIM full-range loudspeakers for the primary left-right coverage, with support from two One Systems double-18 subwoofers. A single One Systems 112IM serves as centre fill in a way that crossfades with the main speakers away from the stage. Chaffee flew six One Systems 112IM directional boxes from the ceiling to serve as stage monitors. ‘With the monitors on the ceiling, there is less clutter on the stage,’ he says. ‘That adds to the flexibility of the system and permits a more rapid changeover from one use to another.’ QSC ISA 1350 and ISA 750 amplifiers provide power.
The system’s ability to handle both simple and involved productions for a few dozen or up to 700 audience members, is achieved through the use of a Symetrix Automix Matrix 780 processor, which serves as the brain of the amphitheater’s audio system.
‘One of the main features that the school asked for was scalable sophistication,’ Chaffee explains. ‘When they’re doing something simple, it has to be simple to operate. But it still has to have the capability to pull off more sophisticated productions.’
To achieve this, he placed two Symetrix ARC-2 remote controls on stage to control up to six mics in what Chaffee terms ‘no brainer’ mode. The ARC-2 provides simple volume control of the mics. In addition, he provided the school with a port to connect their existing sound console for full-scale productions. The second ARC-2 controls configuration and source selection
In a single rack space, the Symetrix Automix Matrix 780 provides all of the assets necessary to condition the input sources, route them logically depending on the preset, and deliver a balanced, time-aligned output.
‘On top of having the right input and output count and all of the customisable user controls we needed, the Symetrix 780 simply sounds great,’ Chaffee says. ‘Symetrix was founded by current CEO Dane Butcher, who got his start as a sound engineer. He has the ears for great audio, and he has always ensured that any product bearing the Symetrix name sounds wonderfully musical, free from distortion or artifacts. Because sound quality was such an important requirement for the school, Symetrix was the right choice.’
‘The bottom line is that the folks who actually work with the system, as well as the folks who merely enjoy it during performances, are all very pleased,’ Vitrofsky says.
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