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Brehm Technology Suite

The Brehm Technology Suite serves as the community hub for PAT students, faculty, and collaborators. This concentrated suite of technologically-rich facilities has had a transformative effect on the PAT Department—building community and supporting a broad range of creative activities.

In 2015, the Tech Suite and several of the SMTD rehearsal halls and recital halls were interconnected with a dedicated Dante digital audio network. This technology allows us to expand the south wing of the Moore Building into a distributed recording studio, with flexible connections between spaces that can be routed in software. For example, ensembles can be recorded in the Britton Recital Hall and mixed simultaneously in the Control Room and Edit Rooms. Other musicians in the Davis Studio could be easily mixed into the recording. All of the performance spaces are also connected by video link for remote monitoring.

Chip Davis Technology Studio

The centerpiece of the Tech Suite, the Chip Davis Technology Studio is a multifunctional, technologically dense environment for teaching, rehearsal, performance, recording, and research. Our design approach was to treat the studio as an infrastructurally rich canvas to support numerous and diverse activities at the intersection of technology and the performing arts.

Currently, the Davis Studio supports the two Performing Arts Technology ensembles: Digital Music Ensemble and Electronic Chamber Music. The ensembles compose, rehearse, and perform music and multimedia works that leverage the unique technological capabilities of the studio. The Davis Studio also variously serves as a tracking space, project workshop, research laboratory, and multimedia gallery for courses in Sound Recording and Production, Interactive Media Design, Immersive Media, and Performance Systems.

The Davis Studio features the following systems:

  • 32-speaker, 3-dimensional immersive audio system supporting both Ambisonic and conventional multichannel audio diffusion, consisting of Genelec 8050 and 8040 speakers and RCF 8004 subwoofers
  • 16-camera marker-based Qualisys motion-capture system with dedicated real-time and offline analysis hardware and software.
  • Theatrical DMX lighting system with a ETC ION controller and state-of-the-art stationary and moving LED lighting instruments by ETC and Elation.
  • Bösendorfer grand piano with CEUSreproducing system for automated recording and real-time computer-controlled playback.
  • Roland M5000 Open High Resolution Configurable Architecture live digital mixing console with Dante
  • Two x 6000-lumen NEC 4K-resolution laser projectors with advanced edge-less projection surfaces.
  • Apple Mac Pro computer with Focusrite Ethernet Audio Interface
  • More than 100 tie lines for analog and digital audio, data, and video interconnection with other Tech Suite spaces.
  • Yamaha drum kit with cymbals
  • Fender Blues Junior guitar amp
  • Ampeg BA-210 Bass amp

 

 

Music Technology Lab

The MTL is a computer music production laboratory that primarily supports the PAT Department’s popular 200-level series of courses on digital music production, composition, and programming. It is equipped with 12 identical computer workstations, plus one instructor station. Computers have a robust suite of specialized audio and video software including ProTools, Logic, Ableton Live, Adobe Creative Suite and Premiere, FinalCut Pro, Max, Sibelius, Finale, and many more. Workstations are connected to an audio mixer, and sound can be distributed over a dedicated 8-speaker system of Genelec 8050 monitors.

Each MTL workstation includes:

Control Room

Far more than a traditional recording studio, the Control Room is a multipurpose environment for digital audio recording, mixing, and composition. The adjacent Davis Studio functions as an acoustically excellent tracking space, but Dante digital audio network connectivity to other Tech Suite spaces as well as Moore Building recital and rehearsal halls allows for flexible recording and mixing of musicians and ensembles throughout the building.

The Control Room features a large-format external display and calibrated 5.1-channel speaker system to support mixing and composition for cinematic applications. These are complemented by a second, independent 8-channel speaker ring for octophonic composition activities. Like all Tech Suite spaces, the Control Room was designed by Kirkegaard Associates, with superior sound isolation, absorption, and diffusion properties.

The Control Room’s extensive audiovisual systems feature the following technologies:

 

 

Workshop

The PAT Department is distinguished by our emphasis on digital musical instruments and performance systems, which permeate our curriculum as well as our research, and performance activities. Our Workshop is an incredibly active place where students and faculty engage in design, prototyping, and fabrication of digital musical instruments, controllers, acoustic systems, and interactive art installations.

The workshop contains a full complement of hand and power tools, electronic components, sensors, test equipment, and embedded computing devices such as Arduino and Bela. In addition to a variety of machine tools—a drill press, band saw, and table saw—we have several specialized tools for digital fabrication:

Editing Rooms

Two nearly identical multipurpose Edit Rooms are available to PAT students for audio and video editing, mixing, and recording. Sound isolation treatments also make these rooms perfect as isolation booths for recording projects, and individual or small group rehearsal for electronic music. Using the Dante digital audio network or analog tie lines, signals can easily be routed to or from the Edit Rooms for recording or performance projects. The Edit Room computers have a robust suite of specialized audio and video software aligned with the Music Technology Lab, including ProTools, Logic, Ableton Live, Adobe Creative Suite and Premiere, FinalCut Pro, Max, Sibelius, Finale, and many more.

Each room contains:

  • 27-inch Apple iMac computer
  • 32-inch external secondary LCD display
  • USB/MIDI Keyboard Controller
  • MOTU 8M AVB/Thunderbolt Audio Interface
  • Presonus Monitor Controller and Headphone Amplifier
  • Dynaudio BM6a MKII monitor speakers with BM9S II subwoofer (Edit Room 1)
  • Neumann KH120 monitor speakers with KH805 subwoofer (Edit Room 2)

Machine Room

The Machine Room is the technological heart of the Tech Suite. Our lifeblood—audio, video, and data signals—are all pumped through Machine Room equipment on their way in and out of other Tech Suite and Moore Building facilities.

The Machine Room features the following systems:

  • 3 x 16-in/16-out Focusrite Rednet2 Ethernet/Dante audio interfaces
  • 3 x 8-channel Focusrite MP8R Ethernet/Dante microphone preamps
  • 2 x 28-port Cisco Gigabit Ethernet switch for Dante digital audio
  • 24-port Cisco 10GB fiberoptic-capable Ethernet data switch
  • 16 x 16 AJA Kumo remote-controlled 3G-SDI video switcher
  • Apogee Big Ben Master Clock
  • Audio, video and network patchbays