Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City
Lincoln Center Atrium Features Bag End Custom Subs
The newly-redesigned David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center
complex in New York City includes a community gathering place, space for free weekly performances, an information desk and box office and the starting point for guided tours of the 16-acre Center. It features a 42-foot long translucent film screen that displays visitor and Lincoln Center performance information, and serves as a canvas for film and curated video presentations. Bag End custom subs were designed for the installation, a confined space that met the challenge of providing rich, even bass across the entire length of the screen.
Bag end utilized the Infrasub technology to extend the subwoofers response well below the range of human hearing. This extended low frequency response adds a feeling of power and authority to the sound even at modest or low volume levels.
“The bass produced by the Bag End subs physically touches the visitors,” says Keith Book from installer North American Theatrix. “They cannot remain passive observers and are drawn into the experience.” As a result although the Atrium was not intended to be a performance space, the quality of the sound has made it one, with free weekly performances by a variety of musical groups.
A special challenge in designing the subs was the thin space that was available for them-only 7 inches of clearance between the screen itself and the concrete wall behind the screen, spaced along its entire length. As a result of this configuration, no matter where a visitor stands in the Atrium space, the bass is uniform.
The David Rubenstein Atrium houses the Center’s box office and is home to an array of programs, services, and amenities designed to welcome, inform, and entertain local residents, the general public, and the thousands of people who visit Lincoln Center and its surrounding community every day. It also serves as a gateway to the entire Lincoln Center campus. The Atrium, is one of approximately 503 Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) in New York City created under a longstanding program that offers zoning incentives for buildings to provide accessible public spaces. It has applied to be the first LEED certified. “green” building on the Lincoln Center campus.
Bag End Loudspeaker Systems is entering its fourth decade of manufacturing professional quality loudspeaker systems and components. Bag End has built an enviable reputation among sound designers, musicians, sound enforcement installation contractors, recording studios and postproduction houses for the integrity of its sound reproduction and rugged construction.