Word: beranek
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...Beranek is the acoustician who designed Philharmonic Hall at New York's Lincoln Center. He spent four years planning what should be the country's leading concert hall, yet critics keep saying that he created an acoustical dud. See MUSIC...
...million pinball machine. Mood of pessimism pervades. Rumors circulate that visiting orchestras are going to boycott splendorous blue-and-gold hall in favor of mellow surroundings of Carnegie Hall. Soloists panic, talk of canceling performances. Hall management says it takes time for ear to adapt. Hall Acoustician Leo Beranek, who spent four years studying 54 of world's finest concert and opera houses in preparation, pleads: "I predicted in the beginning that it would take a year to get the hall into its ultimate condition." Lincoln Center President William Schuman says: "Help...
...Panel of acoustical experts called in. Beranek feels slighted. Gaps between 500-lb. clouds are partially patched up with strips of black plywood. Slabs of plywood and plaster are mounted behind sides of stage. Balconies are reshaped. Lead curtain is hung behind blue-and-gold mesh screen at rear of stage. Sound-dampening Fiberglas is spread across rear wall. Total cost: $500,000. Bell Telephone Laboratories sends man to evaluate hall's sound with new space-age computer. Machine says major problems-lack of bass, uneven distribution of sound, fluttery echoes-are largely corrected. Critics say machine has flipped...
...seat trying to hear the cellos). After the first concert, the engineers lowered some of the 136 acoustical "clouds" suspended from the ceiling that determine much of the hall's sound; the experiments with acoustics, they reported, might go on for another year. (Added Chief Engineer Leo Beranek: "We do not intend to tear down the hall and re build.") The acoustical debate, in fact. became so silly that it was even joined by the New York Herald Tribune's Art Buchwald, who proposed a Save Lincoln Center Committee. "Acoustically speaking," gibed Buchwald only a few days after...
Thunderous Chirp. Far from being alarmed, acoustical engineers today are in favor of the low steady hum. "There should be an unobtrusive noise, constant and surflike," says Robert B. Newman, a partner in the Cambridge. Mass., acoustical engineering firm of Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Inc. Without it, the slightest sound can prove enormously distracting. Typical is the commuter who reads a book amid the accustomed clatter of the 5:42, yet is shaken out of bed when a robin chirps in the silence of a country morning...