LARES
Encyclopedia
LARES is an electronic sound enhancement system that uses microprocessors to control multiple loudspeaker
s and microphone
s placed around a performance space for the purpose of providing active acoustic treatment. LARES was invented in Massachusetts in 1988, by engineers working at Lexicon, Inc.
LARES was given its own company division in 1988: LARES Associates. Since then, hundreds of LARES systems have been used in concert spaces and performance venues, from temporary outdoor music festivals to permanent indoor symphony halls.
The LARES system has been incorporated into prefabricated practice room products offered by Wenger Corporation, and related sound-shaping algorithms, based on the LARES research, have been implemented by Lexicon for home and professional listening spaces. In 2008, LARES was reorganized into E-coustic Systems, offering the familiar LARES products alongside new conference room and sound reinforcement system
s.
Dr. David Griesinger and Steve Barbar developed LARES in 1988 while working at Lexicon, originally located in Waltham, Massachusetts
. Lexicon had become respected for its digital reverberation products used for professional sound recording and concert sound reinforcement. The name LARES is an acronym of Lexicon Acoustic Reinforcement and Enhancement System. In 1989, Griesinger and Barbar, at the request of acousticians Neil Muncy and Robert Tanner, installed the first production LARES system in the Elgin Theatre
in Toronto. This initial system used two microphones placed at the balcony's front edge to pick up sound from the stage. The microphone signals were treated electronically, and the resulting signals were sent to 116 loudspeakers positioned in the ceiling and under the balcony. Griesinger presented a technical paper on the concept, process and results to the Audio Engineering Society
. A primary component of the electronic treatment was the addition of enough digital delay to make the enhanced loudspeaker output wave arrive at its target seating area at the same time or soon after the direct sound from the stage. Reverberation
was digitally synthesized and added to the signal, and patented time variant signal processing was employed to overcome coloration from acoustic feedback
between the microphones and loudspeakers. Two LARES mainframes were used, one for the 60 underbalcony speakers and one for the 56 loudspeakers in the main ceiling.
On April 28, 1992, David H. Griesinger at Lexicon was issued a patent for LARES entitled "Electroacoustic system." In 1993, LARES was nominated for but didn't win a TEC Award in the category of "Signal Processing Technology".
to differentiate the LARES product from the rest of Lexicon's product line. Since that time, hundreds of LARES systems have been installed throughout the world in performing arts center
s, concert halls, opera houses, houses of worship, arenas, recording studios, conference rooms, sound stages, and outdoor concert venues.
At the Vienna Festival
in May, 1995, a LARES system was used outdoors to augment the Vienna Philharmonic's performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
conducted by Zubin Mehta
. Tens of thousands of concert-goers, for the first time, did not criticize the music as being spoiled by amplification. The sound company bought the LARES system for annual usage at the festival. In 1999, LARES was used in a similar fashion in an outdoor production of Turandot
performed in China at the Imperial Shrine just outside the Forbidden City
; staged by Oscar-nominated film director Zhang Yimou
and again conducted by Zubin Mehta.
Some performance venues had their LARES system installed with no fanfare. The Brooklyn Academy of Music
acquired their Howard Gilman Opera House system in the summer of 1997 but made no public announcement. Authorization for the purchase came from then-president Harvey Lichtenstein
, who told a reporter in 1999 "Our feeling is that people have a prejudice against this kind of thing; they think that to use such a system is kind of faking it. We really don't think that's true." Mark London, director of capital projects was reported as saying "The system has added an amazing amount of warmth to the orchestra and significantly altered the acoustics of the hall." London stated that LARES was not turned on for opera, only for orchestra and theater performances.
LARES Associates added a company website on May 24, 1998.
In 2003, Steve Barbar was asked to return to a LARES installation he had just left, the Sunset Center in Carmel, California, as its new acoustic signature was perceived as being too long and too detailed. Bruno Weil, conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival, had requested Barbar to emulate within the Sunset Center the acoustics of a large church. Formerly characterized as having "sponge-like acoustics", the Sunset Center's LARES-enhanced acoustics made coughs and rustlings from the audience be heard too loudly on stage, and reverberation in the audience area was likened to "the Grand Canyon" by one observer. The City of Carmel paid US$10,000 for Barbar's extra ten days of tuning the system. With the assistance of Carmel Bach Festival management, the system was re-tuned with favorable results. Music critic Scott MacClelland wrote: "The search for the optimal acoustic in the Sunset auditorium continues. A controversial electronic enhancement system was built into the renovation – to compensate for some inherent shortcomings of the room — and was freshly tweaked by its designer before this year’s festival began. (It was even further adjusted between the opening Saturday night program and the Sunday matinee under review.) Most of the undesirable artifacts of the original tuning are now gone, and the sonic imagery today may be as good as it gets."
The Jay Pritzker Pavilion
received the first permanent outdoor LARES system in the US in 2004. The very visible system is held above the audience of 11,000 on a slender network of curved steel tubes called a "trellis" by architect Frank Gehry
. LARES loudspeakers are positioned adjacent to the normal distributed sound system loudspeakers, to bring appropriately delayed reinforcement sound as well as synthesized ambience to each listener. Steve Robinson of classical radio station WFMT
said "I have never in my life heard sound projected so faithfully and beautifully over such a great distance... It was an ethereal experience."
, began to work with LARES system concepts and components as a way to enhance the acoustic products and services that Wenger offered. Barbar, Griesinger and Russ Berger of Russ Berger Design Group (RBDG) were involved in the research and development of products that were integrated into prefabricated sound isolating rooms built by Wenger. By 1998, Wenger was advertising their V-Room product on LARES Associates website. V-Room was a product that allowed the electronic enhancement of music rehearsal spaces, giving the option of having the room's reverberation characteristics model a variety of performance spaces. On September 16, 2005, Freiheit filed a patent on an "Active acoustics performance shell" which used a LARES central digital processor "as manufactured by Lares Associates, Inc., Columbia, Md". Wenger filed a contract suit against LARES Associates on April 26, 2006, in Minneapolis
. Currently, Wenger sells sound isolation rooms and "Virtual Acoustic Environment" equipment to give a varied acoustic experience to practice room usage.
continues to benefit from its initial LARES research and development. Lexicon currently offers a scaled-down and simplified microprocessor controller, the MC-12, intended for auditory enhancement within home and professional listening spaces. The system is called Lexicon LIVE.
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
s and microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
s placed around a performance space for the purpose of providing active acoustic treatment. LARES was invented in Massachusetts in 1988, by engineers working at Lexicon, Inc.
Lexicon (company)
Lexicon is an American audio equipment manufacturing company founded in 1971 and owned by Harman International Industries. Lexicon's roots began in 1969 with the founding of American Data Sciences by MIT professor Dr...
LARES was given its own company division in 1988: LARES Associates. Since then, hundreds of LARES systems have been used in concert spaces and performance venues, from temporary outdoor music festivals to permanent indoor symphony halls.
The LARES system has been incorporated into prefabricated practice room products offered by Wenger Corporation, and related sound-shaping algorithms, based on the LARES research, have been implemented by Lexicon for home and professional listening spaces. In 2008, LARES was reorganized into E-coustic Systems, offering the familiar LARES products alongside new conference room and sound reinforcement system
Sound reinforcement system
A sound reinforcement system is the combination of microphones, signal processors, amplifiers, and loudspeakers that makes live or pre-recorded sounds louder and may also distribute those sounds to a larger or more distant audience...
s.
History
Waltham, Massachusetts
Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, was an early center for the labor movement, and major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for 19th century industrial city planning,...
. Lexicon had become respected for its digital reverberation products used for professional sound recording and concert sound reinforcement. The name LARES is an acronym of Lexicon Acoustic Reinforcement and Enhancement System. In 1989, Griesinger and Barbar, at the request of acousticians Neil Muncy and Robert Tanner, installed the first production LARES system in the Elgin Theatre
Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres
The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres are a pair of stacked theatres in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Winter Garden theatre is seven stories above the Elgin Theatre....
in Toronto. This initial system used two microphones placed at the balcony's front edge to pick up sound from the stage. The microphone signals were treated electronically, and the resulting signals were sent to 116 loudspeakers positioned in the ceiling and under the balcony. Griesinger presented a technical paper on the concept, process and results to the Audio Engineering Society
Audio Engineering Society
Established in 1948, the Audio Engineering Society draws its membership from amongst engineers, scientists, other individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. The membership largely comprises engineers developing devices or products for audio, and persons working...
. A primary component of the electronic treatment was the addition of enough digital delay to make the enhanced loudspeaker output wave arrive at its target seating area at the same time or soon after the direct sound from the stage. Reverberation
Reverberation
Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air...
was digitally synthesized and added to the signal, and patented time variant signal processing was employed to overcome coloration from acoustic feedback
Audio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
between the microphones and loudspeakers. Two LARES mainframes were used, one for the 60 underbalcony speakers and one for the 56 loudspeakers in the main ceiling.
On April 28, 1992, David H. Griesinger at Lexicon was issued a patent for LARES entitled "Electroacoustic system." In 1993, LARES was nominated for but didn't win a TEC Award in the category of "Signal Processing Technology".
LARES Associates
In 1995, LARES Associates was established in Belmont, MassachusettsBelmont, Massachusetts
Belmont is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The population was 24,729 at the 2010 census.- History :Belmont was founded on March 18, 1859 by former citizens of, and land from the bordering towns of Watertown, to the south; Waltham, to the west; and Arlington, then...
to differentiate the LARES product from the rest of Lexicon's product line. Since that time, hundreds of LARES systems have been installed throughout the world in performing arts center
Performing arts center
Performing arts center, often abbreviated PAC, is used to refer to* A multi-use performance space that is intended for use by various types of the performing arts, including dance, music and theatre....
s, concert halls, opera houses, houses of worship, arenas, recording studios, conference rooms, sound stages, and outdoor concert venues.
At the Vienna Festival
Vienna Festival
The Wiener Festwochen is a cultural festival in Vienna that takes place every year for five or six weeks in May and June.The Wiener Festwochen was established in 1951, when Vienna was still occupied by the four Allies...
in May, 1995, a LARES system was used outdoors to augment the Vienna Philharmonic's performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
conducted by Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.-Biography:...
. Tens of thousands of concert-goers, for the first time, did not criticize the music as being spoiled by amplification. The sound company bought the LARES system for annual usage at the festival. In 1999, LARES was used in a similar fashion in an outdoor production of Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
performed in China at the Imperial Shrine just outside the Forbidden City
Forbidden City
The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum...
; staged by Oscar-nominated film director Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum....
and again conducted by Zubin Mehta.
Some performance venues had their LARES system installed with no fanfare. The Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
acquired their Howard Gilman Opera House system in the summer of 1997 but made no public announcement. Authorization for the purchase came from then-president Harvey Lichtenstein
Harvey Lichtenstein
Harvey Lichtenstein is a retired American dancer and arts administrator, best known for his 32-year tenure as executive director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music....
, who told a reporter in 1999 "Our feeling is that people have a prejudice against this kind of thing; they think that to use such a system is kind of faking it. We really don't think that's true." Mark London, director of capital projects was reported as saying "The system has added an amazing amount of warmth to the orchestra and significantly altered the acoustics of the hall." London stated that LARES was not turned on for opera, only for orchestra and theater performances.
LARES Associates added a company website on May 24, 1998.
In 2003, Steve Barbar was asked to return to a LARES installation he had just left, the Sunset Center in Carmel, California, as its new acoustic signature was perceived as being too long and too detailed. Bruno Weil, conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival, had requested Barbar to emulate within the Sunset Center the acoustics of a large church. Formerly characterized as having "sponge-like acoustics", the Sunset Center's LARES-enhanced acoustics made coughs and rustlings from the audience be heard too loudly on stage, and reverberation in the audience area was likened to "the Grand Canyon" by one observer. The City of Carmel paid US$10,000 for Barbar's extra ten days of tuning the system. With the assistance of Carmel Bach Festival management, the system was re-tuned with favorable results. Music critic Scott MacClelland wrote: "The search for the optimal acoustic in the Sunset auditorium continues. A controversial electronic enhancement system was built into the renovation – to compensate for some inherent shortcomings of the room — and was freshly tweaked by its designer before this year’s festival began. (It was even further adjusted between the opening Saturday night program and the Sunday matinee under review.) Most of the undesirable artifacts of the original tuning are now gone, and the sonic imagery today may be as good as it gets."
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Jay Pritzker Pavilion, also known as Pritzker Pavilion or Pritzker Music Pavilion, is a bandshell in Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is located on the south side of Randolph Street and east of the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan...
received the first permanent outdoor LARES system in the US in 2004. The very visible system is held above the audience of 11,000 on a slender network of curved steel tubes called a "trellis" by architect Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
. LARES loudspeakers are positioned adjacent to the normal distributed sound system loudspeakers, to bring appropriately delayed reinforcement sound as well as synthesized ambience to each listener. Steve Robinson of classical radio station WFMT
WFMT
WFMT is an FM radio station in Chicago, Illinois, featuring a format of fine arts, classical music programming, and shows exploring such genres as folk and jazz). The station is managed by Window To The World Communications, Inc., owner of WTTW, one of Chicago's two Public Broadcasting Service ...
said "I have never in my life heard sound projected so faithfully and beautifully over such a great distance... It was an ethereal experience."
Wenger Corp.
Ron Freiheit, director of acoustic research at Wenger Corporation in Owatonna, MinnesotaOwatonna, Minnesota
Owatonna is a city in Steele County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 25,599 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Steele County. Owatonna is home to the Steele County Fairgrounds, which hosts the Steele County Free Fair in August....
, began to work with LARES system concepts and components as a way to enhance the acoustic products and services that Wenger offered. Barbar, Griesinger and Russ Berger of Russ Berger Design Group (RBDG) were involved in the research and development of products that were integrated into prefabricated sound isolating rooms built by Wenger. By 1998, Wenger was advertising their V-Room product on LARES Associates website. V-Room was a product that allowed the electronic enhancement of music rehearsal spaces, giving the option of having the room's reverberation characteristics model a variety of performance spaces. On September 16, 2005, Freiheit filed a patent on an "Active acoustics performance shell" which used a LARES central digital processor "as manufactured by Lares Associates, Inc., Columbia, Md". Wenger filed a contract suit against LARES Associates on April 26, 2006, in Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
. Currently, Wenger sells sound isolation rooms and "Virtual Acoustic Environment" equipment to give a varied acoustic experience to practice room usage.
E-coustic Systems
After researching and developing new applications of electronic acoustic treatment, LARES Associates had more than the standard LARES system to offer their customers. In 2008, they reformed into E-coustic Systems, remaining in Belmont. In addition to LARES, E-coustic Systems offers LARES Viva, a conference room acoustic treatment system as well as an array of sound reinforcement components suitable for implementation within an architectural acoustic design.Lexicon
LexiconLexicon (company)
Lexicon is an American audio equipment manufacturing company founded in 1971 and owned by Harman International Industries. Lexicon's roots began in 1969 with the founding of American Data Sciences by MIT professor Dr...
continues to benefit from its initial LARES research and development. Lexicon currently offers a scaled-down and simplified microprocessor controller, the MC-12, intended for auditory enhancement within home and professional listening spaces. The system is called Lexicon LIVE.
See also
- Architectural acousticsArchitectural acousticsArchitectural acoustics is the science of noise control within buildings. The first application of architectural acoustics was in the design of opera houses and then concert halls. More widely, noise suppression is critical in the design of multi-unit dwellings and business premises that generate...
- Digital room correctionDigital room correctionDigital room correction is a process in the field of acoustics where digital filters designed to ameliorate unfavorable effects of a room's acoustics are applied to the input of a sound reproduction system...
- ReverberationReverberationReverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air...
- Room acousticsRoom acousticsRoom acoustics describes how sound behaves in an enclosed space.The way that sound behaves in a room can be broken up into roughly four different frequency zones:...
Technical papers
- AES 90th Convention. February 19–22, 1991. David Griesinger, Lexicon. Improving Room Acoustics Through Time-Variant Synthetic Reverberation
- Steve Barbar, Lexicon Inc. November 10, 1995. Further Development in the Design, Implementation, and Performance OF Time Variant Acoustic Enhancement Systems. Presented at the 1994 IOA Windermere Conference
- David Griesinger. Lexicon. Beyond MLS – Occupied hall measurement with FFT techniques 1994
- David Griesinger. Lexicon. How Loud Is My Reverberation. 1995
- David Griesinger. Lexicon. Spaciousness and envelopment in musical acoustics. 1996
- David Griesinger. Lexicon. Further Investigation into the Loudness of Running Reverberation 1996
- David Griesinger. Lexicon. Objective Measures of Spaciousness and Envelopment. 1998
- David Griesinger. Lexicon. Recent Experiences with Electronic Acoustic Enhancement in Concert Halls and Opera Houses 1999