[Tim Sprout]

NEW YORK, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Cyril M. Harris, an acoustical
engineer who created the sound in many of the most prominent U.S.
concert halls, theaters and auditoriums, has died at 93.
Harris died Tuesday at his Manhattan home, The New York
Times reported
Harris was known as a traditionalist who, in an era of
steel, glass and concrete, preferred wood and plaster to bring the
full, resonant sound of the great 19th-century concert halls to
their modern counterparts, including the Metropolitan Opera and
Avery Fisher Hall in New York.
His approach proved highly successful, starting in 1966 with
the Metropolitan, whose acoustics he designed with the Danish
engineer Vilhelm Jordan.
Harris eventually would design the acoustics for more than
100 halls across the nation, the Times said.
His renovation of the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in
the mid-1970s, which had been beset with acoustical problems since
its 1962 opening, cemented his reputation as the pre-eminent
acoustical engineer in the United States.
Harold C. Schonberg, the classical music critic for The New
York Times, wrote that Harris's acoustical rehabilitation had
changed it from "a horror to one of the important acoustic
installations of the world."


-Tim Sprout