Managing noise restrictions in Melbourne’s cultural scene
The City of Melbourne is a hive of activity. There is always something happening in Victoria, from special events and festivals to infrastructure and environmental projects. As a 
The Now or Never festival: a unique challenge
Having recently showcased our expanded capabilities through our work with RISING, a winter arts festival using iconic Melbourne city locations as their backdrop, the team were also engaged to provide vibration and assessment monitoring services for the Now or Never festival.
‘This was quite a unique project for us,’ Artur Moreira, Acoustic Consultant, explained. ‘Basically, we were involved in everything from the initial assessment and establishing the criteria to undertaking monitoring during the festival,’ he added.
Running for 17 days, the inaugural Now or Never event celebrates arts, ideas, music and technology through immersive experiences and mediums. To take the spectacle to the next level, the Royal Exhibition Building was unveiled as one of the festival’s major venues.
Preserving Melbourne’s iconic Royal Exhibition Building
Built in 1880, this building is a mainstay of Melbourne and features iconic Sistine Chapel paintings as well as the supremely popular Dome Promenade. Such is the importance of 
As this structure was intended to be the epicentre for the cultural festival, Resonate Consultants were engaged to ensure that the combination of heavy bass and electronic music vibration, both through ground and air-borne didn’t interfere with the building’s structural integrity.
For the last two decades, live music performances and events have been absent from the Royal Exhibition Building’s schedule. This, combined with the lack of literature surrounding such an exercise, made this project a challenging one for the team.
‘We were in a very distinctive situation where the building was degraded slightly, and any available vibration standards pertained to construction works rather than vibrations induced by high levels of noise,’ Artur said.
Noise and vibration management solutions
With a genuine commitment to our core value of being client-centric, the team researched a range of different mitigation options. ‘We explored the idea of using filters on the music to isolate certain frequencies,’ Alec Kuoch, Senior Acoustic Consultant, said. ‘Since the event centred around music in that slow frequency domain, this didn’t end up being a viable option as it would have drastically impacted the music,’ he added.
In addition to filters, vibration isolation systems and spring systems were also ruled out. As a result, ‘we just went ahead cautiously,’ Artur said. This approach meant conducting preliminary investigations in a warehouse complete with a large sound system to better understand the project’s intricacies.
From there, criteria were established to confirm that, with monitoring, the noise levels and vibration values targets were not exceeded. This key part of the process was made easier with the help of a new monitoring system. ‘The system only became available in Australia last month,’ Alec noted.
More efficient and user-friendly, this system essentially sends data through the cloud to a webpage, which, in this case, was set up by Alec. Making it easier for internal parties and stakeholders to glean the data. ‘This wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago,’ Artur explained. Highlighting how, at Resonate Consultants, we are dedicated to pursuing innovations that can help improve processes for our consultants and our clients.
Stakeholders’ priorities
Another key challenging component of this project was the sheer amount of stakeholders involved. The City of Melbourne, Museums Victoria and Heritage Victoria, and the event 
‘It was imperative for us to be clear from the beginning, with all stakeholders, that this wouldn’t be a black and white project with yes or no answers,’ Artur said. With this in mind, Artur, Alec and the team went above and beyond to instil confidence in the established criteria.
‘Along with the initial testing, we consulted the literature – we base ourselves on the German standard (DIN 4150.3:2016) – and made adaptions where necessary because, while that standard is a good indication, it’s not black and white. In the end, our monitoring system showed that as the result of our investigative work, our criteria was strong, not too conservative yet not too relaxed,’ Artur explained.
In addition to providing Resonate Consultants with further insight into the cultural events realm, this unique project will also work to form the foundation of a research paper. ‘We really feel like we are the perfect team to balance artistic and engineering outcomes, so we want to help other venues or projects that might be in similar situations,’ Alec said.
