Created by director Franco Dragone, The Han Show in Wuhan, China is thrilling capacity audiences of 2,000 with water-based spectacles supported by a massive and complex Meyer Sound system. Designed by Vikram Kirby of California’s Thinkwell Group, the system comprises 359 self-powered loudspeakers that are processed, distributed, and matrixed by the largest D-Mitri digital audio platform assembled to date, comprising 53 frames.

The system’s complex because, apart from being a world-class entertainment spectacular, the loudspeaker configurations must adapt to a dual-mode auditorium. During the performance, the upper seating area drops down and the lower seating area splits and rotates to the sides to reveal a pool for the water-based elements of the show. Because the entire seating layout changes, the show requires two completely separate sound systems under one roof.

‘What was critically important for this project was to have a single supplier that could help us scale from very small to huge, and I don’t know of any high-quality manufacturer other than Meyer Sound with such product breadth,’ explains Kirby. ‘We scale all the way from line array hangs to tiny MM-4XPs for front fills, with a need for every size in between – plus special-purpose speakers like the beam-steering CAL column array loudspeaker and the directional SB-2 parabolic wide-range sound beam.’

Used for surrounds and local upstage sources, The Han Show’s nine CAL elements are the largest deployment of CAL to date in an entertainment application. ‘The CALs work wonderfully as lateral surrounds,’ Kirby reports. ‘You get a uniformity of coverage across a wide seating area that you can’t get from point source boxes. The CALs deliver a more complete sound-mapping effect, particularly when moving off-centre.’

He was similarly pleased by the performance of 18 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements. ‘They are just phenomenal in the way they control the low end. We did a lot of work with the directional steering, and it really helped. The bass sound is very tight for such a large room.’

Comprising 16 different Meyer Sound models including Mica, Mna and M’elodie line array loudspeakers, the system is configured as 29 separate subsystems to meet the show’s requirements, with each requiring its own dedicated signal matrixing and processing. Managing this complexity is the D-Mitri digital audio platform controlled by CueConsole user interfaces at two FOH positions and monitors, with the entire system networked across a fibre-optic ring. Layout of the network infrastructure was handled by Colbert Davis, associate sound designer, working in collaboration with Extreme Networks.

Loudspeaker drive and array optimisation were supplied by eight Galileo Callisto 616 array processors, along with a Galileo loudspeaker management system with two Galileo 408 processors. The Meyer Sound systems were provided by Shanghai Broad Future Electro Technology and installed by Beijing-based AoTeWei.

‘This is undoubtedly the most challenging project I’ve undertaken,’ says Kirby. ‘It’s not just left, right, subs and back surrounds – the whole theatre is ringed with loudspeakers. And when you add all the changes that come from a reconfigured auditorium, you have a whole different order of complexity.’

With an exterior shaped like a red Chinese paper lantern, The Han Show Theatre was designed by architect Mark Fisher of London-based Stufish Entertainment Architects.