Warner Theatre Rehearsal Hall - Acentech Case Study

By Jonah Sacks, Director, Architectural Acoustics | Principal at Acentech

In 2023, the Warner Theatre in Erie, Pennsylvania completed a major renovation and addition that included a new rehearsal and events hall, designed by Daniel P. Coffey & Associates, with Acentech. Now, for the first time, the Erie Philharmonic has a well-designed rehearsal space in the same building in which they perform.

The major acoustic design features are the room volume and shaping, a large operable curtain, and a wood slat ceiling. The ceiling is the focus of this study.

The wood slat ceiling serves as a hybrid acoustic surface, with a mix of acoustically absorptive and reflective areas. This is achieved with a highly open slat arrangement (1.75” slat width, 2.375” gaps between slats), an approximately 8” space between the slats and the roof above, 3” glass fiber insulation mounted to the roof, and plywood panels placed behind the slats in certain areas. The result is a patchwork pattern of absorptive and reflective ceiling zones.

During construction, the design of the ceiling system changed, and this change was unavoidable for constructability reasons. The plywood reflector panels, instead of being placed directly behind the slats as designed, were placed several inches above, against the glass fiber insulation.  

In 2024, we attended a rehearsal of the Erie Philharmonic in the space. We listened and discussed with the conductor and musicians during breaks. All agreed that the space works well, that the conductor can hear the musicians, and that the musicians can hear themselves and one another well. The next day, we measured acoustic impulse responses in the space, with the orchestra furniture in place (chairs, stands, percussion instruments) but without the musicians. We used an NTI dodecahedral loudspeaker and a Sennheiser Ambeo 4-channel spatial microphone. A custom Max/MSP patch provided the sweep signal and processed the audio to provide impulse responses in ambisonic B-format. We concluded that the space is functioning as intended, both in terms of the orchestra’s experience (our top priority), and in terms of objective measurements.

Because the ceiling system had changed between design and construction, we were interested to know about its performance in greater detail. We undertook a study, for our own research and education, of the ceiling system. First, we updated our spreadsheet calculations of reverberation times to match the as-built condition and our measurements. Then, we created a Treble model of the space and adjusted material coefficients to match our measurements.

Lastly, we created a mockup of a section of the slat ceiling and measured its acoustic absorption using an intensity probe (Microflown). The mockup was simple and easy to build using standard framing lumber, glass fiber insulation, and plywood. The data was processed to produce maps of the absorption performance of the mockup by frequency band.

This study helped to refine our understanding of the performance of the ceiling system, which absorbs sound quite effectively at most frequencies, and contributes valuable reflections for ensemble intelligibility in the 1,000 to 2,500 Hz region. The Treble model helped us to translate between our measurements of room decay times and our up-close mockup measurements to create a coherent analysis and understanding.