Pablo Romero
Senior Consultant
Pablo assists and consults on all aspects of acoustic design and planning, sound separation, and noise and vibration design.
email hidden; JavaScript is required
Pablo has over 16 years’ experience in acoustic and sound engineering working with leading consultancy and engineering firms. He has delivered outstanding and successful projects across the globe as an acoustic engineer, theatre consultant, project manager and team leader.
Pablo’s experience in these projects includes undertaking acoustic planning, design and implementation for venues, theatres, education spaces, and research and health facilities, as well as sound system design for venues and airports. He has had extended involvement with environmental noise control for industrial and infrastructure projects, assessing and implementing noise strategies to comply with policies and statutory requirements. Pablo has also spent time conducting sound engineering for recording studios, television and films in Ecuador and Canada.
Since joining the Melbourne studio, Pablo has reconnected with his love for acoustics in performance venues, working on local projects including the Melbourne Arts Precinct, the Sydney Theatre Company Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, and the Waikato Regional Theatre in New Zealand. Internationally, he is contributing with the acoustic design of the Second City venues in Toronto and the Novo Park event spaces in Bucharest, Romania.
If you were to establish your own venue, what would you call it, and what would that venue specialist in?
I would call my venue “QUIPU” which comes from kechwa language and means “talking knot”. The Quipu was a recording device made from cotton strings used by Inca people to collect data and as a graphic writing instrument. The venue would specialise in a modern version of verbal storytelling using digital media and AV. The storyteller would be placed centre stage surrounded by the audience, with children’s stories, ancient stories and aboriginal stories as the main performances.
What qualities should a 'great performance space' have?
A great performance space should provoke emotions from the audience and facilitate the communication of the art of performance and the emotions of the performers. The three main elements to achieve this are: a well-designed and comfortable physical environment thinking about acoustics, architectural lighting, heating, ventilation and seating type and layout; a modern, flexible and convenient technical infrastructure, and appealing, exceptional yet functional architectural space.
What first sparked your love of acoustics?
From my childhood I am used to being on stage - as a performer, as a technician and as a designer. I remember as a young performer, in some venues the sound was great while in others the sound was so bad that the best decision was to stop the show because it was impossible to hear anything! I guess it started there, being curious about how sound works physically and how to get it to the audience’s ears with quality identical to the source.
If you could recommend visitors to Melbourne experience one thing, what would it be?
In terms of experience, definitely having some drinks in the great variety of hidden and secret bars in the CBD back alleys.
Supporting the industry internationally since 2004
