The Beacon Theatre on Broadway is one of New York’s most prestigious entertainment venues. Opened in 1929 as a movie palace, today The Beacon Theatre is a listed building thanks to its incredibly ornate interior and cultural significance. Since its conversion into a live performance venue in 1971, it quickly became one of the most popular concert halls in New York City, hosting the biggest names in live entertainment.
However, it has also been one of the most acoustically challenging with a plethora of hard, reflective surfaces and architectural restrictions making it extremely difficult to achieve even coverage and optimal sound.
In 2022 venue owners Madison Square Garden Group decided to match the beautifully restored interior and high-calibre of touring acts with a cutting-edge sound system that would provide the best audio experience to every seat.
Beacon’s HOLOPLOT X1 Matrix Array system consists of two arrays, each tailored to precisely direct sound to the theatre’s four sections – orchestra, loge, lower balcony and upper balcony.
The X1 system is deployed in a traditional left/right configuration comprising hangs of 6 x MD96 and 6 x MD80-S each in a 6x2 checkerboard format.
However, this is where traditional ends and the magic of the Matrix begins…
With X1, audience members no longer hear audio relative to where they’re sitting – which is better in some places than in others with a traditional audio setup. Instead, audio beams from the left and right arrays reach every seat in the house, widening the stereo image for a more realistic listening experience.
Whether you’re in the front row or the back of the balcony, or seated to the side, with X1 there’s no longer any loss of quality based on where you’re seated.
The balcony sections at The Beacon have large tier fronts that reflect sound back at performers, unnecessarily exciting the room. Utilizing 3D Audio-Beamforming, the HOLOPLOT system is able to prevent energy spillage onto room boundaries, such as the balcony fronts, allowing the audio to be precisely steered to where it’s desired, making for cleaner room acoustics and a better listening experience.
