Acoustics of the Civic Centre Theatre, San Diego, California

Abstract

The new Civic Theatre for the city of San Diego forms part of the new Civic Centre complex, which also includes a 10 000-seat convention hall and a high-rise city-administration building. The Theatre has an audience capacity of 3000, with seating arranged on a main floor and two balconies. The auditorium is designed to accommodate the variety of speech and music activities that normally comprise the program requirements for large multipurpose civic theatres. It has a volume of approximately 860 000 ft3 and a design reverberation time (for full occupancy) of 1.7 sec at the midfrequencies. An integral aspect of the acoustical design is the demountable stage enclosure required for orchestral concerts. The paper compares the predicted reverberation time for the auditorium with measurements obtained following completion of the building. Tests prior to opening were conducted with full concert orchestra for purposes of obtaining optimum performance characteristics. A discussion of these tests and some observations on multifunction use are included in this paper. Architects for the project are Rosser, Kennedy, & Ruocco of San Diego, California.