TURNING A TIN CAN SPORTS ARENA INTO A CONCERT HALL

The San Diego Sports Arena has played host to some of the biggest names in rock music: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, the Grateful Dead, Jackson Browne, John Cougar Mellencamp, Stevie Wonder and Neil Diamond. Locally, it has long had the reputation of booking some of the best acts in the business. But, its critics say, it’s a good news-bad news proposition.

The bad news? It may be one of the worst arenas in the country for hearing music, according to Rudy Paolini, an architect and the senior vice president of Wagner-Hohns-Inglis Inc., a firm based in Pasadena, not far from the Rose Bowl.

To put it mildly, Paolini said, the acoustics at the Sports Arena are woeful--not much better than those in a big tin can. (Ironically, the ceiling--the big offender--is made of corrugated metal.)

Paolini’s opinion counts not just because he’s an opera buff with a trained ear. He once drove to the Sports Arena to hear his favorite tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, who brought in his own high-priced sound system to try to override the bad acoustics.

That’s why John Cougar Mellencamp may have sounded clearer and more resonant in his recent San Diego appearance than Bob Dylan did in his. Paolini said some groups are able to compensate for bad acoustics with elaborate sound systems and state-of-the-art road-show engineers. But they are clearly in the minority. Fans, meanwhile, often leave Sports Arena shows with the look of having seen and heard a mixed blessing.

Paolini’s opinion matters a lot--he’s recently been hired to thoroughly revamp the arena’s acoustics at a cost of $400,000.

He said the good news is it can be done--the arena is capable of approaching concert-hall quality. At the least, he predicted, its sound will be radically improved.

Come March 1, Paolini said, the Sports Arena will be one of the best in the country for hearing live music--whether it’s Pavarotti or the punkish Pretenders or the Bolshoi Ballet (which has expressed interest in coming provided the sound gets better). Construction, expected to take eight days, begins in February.

Word of Paolini’s project is now rumbling through the music world. Sports Arena officials have a large ad scheduled to run in the program for the upcoming Grammy Awards.

“We Just Broke the Sound Barrier,” the ad announces in bold black letters.

“There’s nothing better than playing in front of (a capacity of) 15,000,” the copy reads. “Unless the quality of sound is something no one wants to hear.”

Paolini thinks he can change that. He said “on paper” the project is already a huge success.

“The sky’s the limit,” said Sports Arena President Vin Ciruzzi, sounding the optimistic note on expected new acts. “We’d even love to have the symphony play here, provided they can work out their problems. We could have any orchestra play here.”

Phil Quinn, longtime manager of the Sports Arena, said the Spectrum, a large sports arena in Philadelphia, recently was host to an operatic production of “Aida,” complete with camels and elephants. He’s hopeful his building can do the same.

The Sports Arena lacks a major-league sports franchise in basketball or hockey, its original uses. Ciruzzi said that behind-the-scenes efforts are being made to lure clubs from both the National Basketball Assn. and National Hockey League. Even so, such a tenant could be years in coming.

In the meantime, the San Diego Sockers, a professional soccer team, and the men’s basketball team from San Diego State University are primary tenants. Those evenings, combined with rock shows (now the major renters), produce about 180 dates a year.

“That’s a lot of dark nights,” Quinn said. “We’ve got to do better.”

They hope to make up the difference with even more rock acts--which bring in more money than sports teams, Quinn said--while also appealing to symphonies, ballets, even operas. Quinn and Ciruzzi turned to Paolini for help when they realized they needed a quick acoustical fix.

For $2 million, Paolini’s company--which is primarily involved in construction claims litigation, as expert witnesses--oversaw a recent complete refurbishing of the building. The work included repairs to the roof, installation of new seats, repainting of the entire structure, as well as numerous minor considerations.

Hearing of the acoustical woes, Paolini drove down for the Neil Diamond show to “scope out” the problem. He was horrified.

“I couldn’t stand it,” he said. “I’d never heard anything worse.”

He didn’t mean the quality of the presentation--merely its acoustical embellishment.

For assistance, Paolini brought in a recognized genius in the field, Michael Klasco, an acoustical engineer and the president of his own company, Menlo Scientific of Berkeley.

Klasco’s biggest claim to fame borders on the truly bizarre. He was recently hired by the South Korean government to install a series of gigantic speakers along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which borders hostile North Korea. The speakers’ function is to hurl propaganda toward the enemy. If you come within 100 yards of the speakers, Paolini said, your eardrum will be shattered.

Pleased with his efforts, the South Koreans hired Klasco to augment the acoustics in every arena scheduled for use in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. He brought some of those same techniques to San Diego.

He came to the Sports Arena bearing computers and a “pink noise” machine and a fleet of other high-tech gizmos designed for making his own sound chamber, testing its flaws and then prescribing the necessary modifications.

He tested mainly for reverberation time, perhaps the most critical factor in rock-music acoustics.

Paolini explained:

“In a big space, you try to eliminate the reflected waves. The Sports Arena had lots of waves, lots of reverberation time--as much as seven seconds, which isn’t good. That can wreck rock music.”

He said that organ music and other instrumentation is actually enhanced with longer reverberation. Rock vocals , however, tend to reverberate toward some graveyard of the ear.

Klasco said the Sports Arena’s near-seven seconds was “ghastly,” and that even the Grateful Dead would be ungrateful and find it dreadful. He’s hopeful that by redoing the acoustics (more about that soon), he and Paolini can shrink the reverberation time by at least half and maybe more.

“The length varies with frequency and location,” Klasco said from his office in Berkeley. “But for rock, 1 to 1 1/2 seconds is very good. Three for that space is OK, and I think we’ll have that, maybe less.

“Two for that space is impossible, at the moment, unless everybody wears fur coats. And I don’t think you’re gonna see that at a rock show.”

He admitted, though, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. What you want for rock is, he said, “the deadest space possible.” Short of that, you need as much of a cushion as possible. Furry, bulky clothing provides more of a cushion than the barn-like corrugated metal that Klasco found so repellent about the arena’s ceiling.

“You want to hear rock exactly as it sounds coming out of the speakers,” he said. “Ideally, you don’t want any echo or reverberation time. That distorts rock, ruins it. But most of the arenas around the country pose exactly those kinds of problems. San Diego is an exception only in the sense that they have the foresight--and are willing to spend the money--to do something about it.”

To help cushion the impact of rock--to lower the reverberation time and create a more even sound--Klasco and Paolini are installing 200 wedge-shaped devices, to be hung inelegantly from the ceiling. Attached to steel tresses, these 2-by-8-foot devices are made of wood, fiberglass and foam and have the primary function of soaking up sound. The foam, a high-grade fire-resistant material, is the most expensive and hard-to-get ingredient. It’s being shipped from West Germany.

The angles of the wedges will be varied and tested periodically for even sharper sound effect. In addition, about 100 cylindrical-shaped “Helmholtz units” will circle the perimeter of the ceiling. These will be used as “resonators,” Paolini said, with the dual function of further soaking up sound and curbing reverberation.

Paolini is cautiously optimistic about the results, though clearly excited.

“I’ve put my head on the block for these people,” he said. “I’ve promised them tremendous improvement and I think that’s what we’ll have. My hope is that the sound will be so improved they’ll have every group in the world wanting to come.

“Who knows? They may have to fight ‘em off with a stick.”