Located just off the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum (USHMM) is a research centre and memorial, as well as a
powerful and well-presented collection of artefacts, documents, photographs, films,
and audio recordings about the Holocaust. The museum’s 500-seat Meyerhoff
Theater is a beautiful venue for lectures, meetings, speeches, and documentary
films, but its old sound system was woefully inadequate. To design a new system
that would fully meet the theatre’s needs, museum management turned to Steve
Haas, founder and president of SH Acoustics. Haas specified a system based on
Renkus-Heinz Iconyx-series loudspeakers.

Haas’ team embarked upon a complete overhaul, getting rid of the existing systems
and introducing acoustic treatment to tame some of the excess reverberation
without affecting the architecture-a difficult challenge. The new Renkus-Heinz
Iconyx system is primarily intended for speech reinforcement but can also serve as
the high and mid-section of a full-range system for films.

“The main arrays are actually a combination of Iconyx systems,” begins Haas. “We
serve the main body of seats with two Renkus-Heinz IC16-R-IIs that flank the stage.
We did our usual beam-steering with the IC-16-R-IIs, which helped deal with the
acoustics.”

Complicating matters, however, the sound system also had to serve a wrap-around
balcony level that starts at the level of the top row of the main body of seats. “The
balcony had zero coverage with the previous system,” USHMM AV Specialist Tom
Fortwengler remembers. “It was a tremendous dead spot until you got out from
under the balcony. The new system solved that but it wasn’t easy.”

“The sightlines from each edge of the stage would not hit half of the mezzanine
because of the way the mezzanine is pushed back,” Haas details. “We were
concerned about trying to extend the IC16-R-II arrays up high to cover that, so we
did something unusual: We put in a pair of Renkus-Heinz IC8-R-IIs above the IC16-
R-IIs and crossfired them. We could get away with crossfiring because true stereo
imaging isn’t critical for the speeches or for the types of films that they were
showing.”

At the same time, Haas and his team used a trick that they had developed for
museum exhibits. “We put in a bunch of ceiling speakers over the mezzanine
seating,” he reveals, “and we delayed them so they delivered the primary sound.
We used the front top IC8-R-IIs only for localization. That gave the feeling that the
image was close to the people but pulled it toward the stage-but not so far that it
pulled the image to the opposite side of the stage. It worked, and the client was
happy with the solution.”

To deliver sub-lows, Haas chose Renkus-Heinz DRS18-1B non-powered subwoofers,
located behind the stage. To avoid detracting from the architecture, the museum
staff and Haas were careful not to expose low-frequency elements further
downstage. “The subwoofers are primarily for films,” Haas notes. “They might
occasionally be used for a performance but we try to avoid that because the
subwoofers are behind where the performers would be, which could cause
feedback.” That said, the DRS18-1Bs are moveable, enabling them to be
repositioned for a particular performance.