Sound Beam Acoustic Flashlight

02 Dec Sound Beam Acoustic Flashlight

During renovations to convert Vancouver’s historic Orpheum Theatre into a symphony space, Barron & Associates is hired to assess building acoustics and collaborates with theatre acoustician Theodore Schultz. Doug Whicker recalls Shultz carrying “about ten different pieces of equipment, all strung together with cables and everything and all kinds of messy stuff. He came in with an array of electrostatic speakers and he was using this to focus his ceiling clouds. And Marcel Rivard had a look at it and says, ‘I can do a better job than that.’”

The result is the Sound Beam acoustic flashlight—four electrostatic speakers and a filtered high-frequency noise source connected to an automotive headlight. The headlight illuminates where the sound from the speakers is aimed. BKL uses the acoustic flashlight for the next three decades to align reflecting panels in theatres.