This is the last article in a series on music museum integration. Check out Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s $1.5M Tech Upgrade, Grammy Museum Overhauls Audio Approach and Experience Music Project Upgrades A/V System.

The Country Music Hall of Fame, operated by the nonprofit Country Music Foundation, moved into its new 135,000-square-foot home in downtown Nashville in May 2001.

User-experience specialist Electrosonic did the original A/V systems integration there, but the Country Music HOF has been a work in progress since then, particularly after the opening in May 2010 of a new 5,500-square-foot space on the second floor.

Since the original systems were put in, updates have been done by the museum’s own staff and local interactive exhibit specialists Anode, which has done systems for a number of regional music museums including the Stax Museum in Memphis and the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, working with acoustical consultants Jaffe Holden.

“One of the missions we had is in finding ways to help get visitors closer to the artifacts,” explains Chris Lee, Anode’s vice president of technology, who notes that much of the original design had many of the museum’s items behind high, thick glass walls, collateral to the museum’ s own mission of artifact preservation but which put a wall, figuratively and literally, between history and the visitor.

After the facility had been open for several years, museum managers analyzed the traffic flow patterns inside the building and rearranged several exhibits, most notably taking a songwriters interactive that had been intended to be permanently installed at the building’ s entrance and stretching it out over a walkway further inside, freeing up the entrance space for rotating 18-to-24-month exhibits, such as the current one showcasing Williams Family Tradition.

Photos: Country Music Hall of Fame Evolves A/V System

Lee says given the number of interactive stations throughout the museum, keeping the sound as focused as possible was always important, and they still use the Dakota Audio steerable array speakers that were put in during the original systems installation (it was reportedly the very first application of Dakota Audio’ s highly focused loudspeakers). Brown Innovations SoundDome speakers now augment those. Lee says the Dakota Audio speakers still work fine and service the rotating display area near the entrance with highly focused audio over specific areas of the exhibit, but that their large size and weight requires at least two workers to install them.

The SoundDomes, Lee says can be installed by a single integrator. They work best when the lightweight plastic parabolic dome can be set at a height below the ceiling and closer above the viewer, while the Dakota Audio speakers’ longer throw lets them be mounted from the ceiling.

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