Recently opened on Paris’ Seguin Island, the new La Seine Musicale music complex is a cultural lighthouse, according to the President of the Hauts-de-Seine Departmental Council. ‘Beyond the symbol, it is a reality,’ he says.
Occupying 36,000-sq-m and able host every type of musical performance, it houses two main concert halls, five recording studios and several rehearsal spaces. Its main 1,150-seat Auditorium is the complex’s signature with acoustics by Nagata Acoustics and Jean-Paul Lamoureux, and a sound reinforcement system designed by Amadeus.
In partnership with Jean de Gastines, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban designed La Seine Musicale. Outside it resembles an egg. Inside, the concert hall is in the style of a vineyard. Listeners are spread over several levels surrounding the stage, in close proximity to the performers. The banked floors on which the seats are set create early reflections radiating from the orchestra to the audience, enhancing this intimacy.
‘We attached a great importance to the equipment reliability, performance and flexibility to the Auditorium and the Grande Seine,’ says Mickael Dinant, the head of the Scenography Department and Concert Halls Construction at Bouygues Construction.
‘These aspects were very challenging, and the modularity as well, because we had to be able to change from one configuration to another, very quickly and easily. In this sense, the manufacturer’s involvement, as well as their professional integrity, were key aspects to guarantee a final result matching the Seine Musicale’s goal, of both prestige and ambition.’
Based in Paris, Amadeus is one of the world’s premiere manufacturers of high-end sound reinforcement systems, was chosen to equip the two main concert halls of the Seine Musicale building complex with their specially developed speaker systems. As the sole speaker manufacturer chosen for the project, Amadeus also installed speakers in multiple rehearsal spaces throughout the centre.
Overcoming the venue’s challenges was only possible due ‘to the professionalism of Videlio, which was in charge of the audiovisual integration, and to Amadeus, who designed, developed, and built the speaker systems’ says Dinant explains. ‘Amadeus has been completely involved in the project during the past three years,’ he adds. ‘With Amadeus’ inventiveness and expertise, they developed new speaker array enclosures perfectly adapted to our needs, and played a major role in the success of this magical venue.’
To meet the project’s requirements, Amadeus completely redesigned its mid-format Diva speaker array, which already serves some of the major musical, theatrical and public institutions – both national and international – including the Philharmonie de Paris, La Gaîté Lyrique, the National Assembly of South Korea and the National Theatre of Brittany. The Seine Musicale is the first install in the world to feature the new Diva M² (Diva M Squared) array speakers.
‘The Diva M² is not a simple evolution of the Diva M speaker series created in 2006, it is a revolution, a total and radical reinvention,’ asserts Amadeus Marketing Manager, Gaetan Byk. ‘This new version raises the bar much higher. Its new design incorporates a dramatic collection of more than 100 major changes, compared to the previous Diva model.’
‘The structure of the low, mid and high-frequency transducers, the geometry of the cabinets, their internal and external structures, the active filtering design and more – basically all major acoustic, electro-acoustic, electronic, and mechanical components have been completely rethought, reinvented.’
In addition to the main Auditorium, which is dedicated to acoustic music, La Seine Musicale can host a wide range of shows. The Grande Seine performance space was designed to be simple and versatile, and it hosts every type of equipment needed for any type of modern pop music concert, musical or other live or corporate event. Equipped with three different stages and retractable tiers, the performance space has a capacity of 4,000 seats, or up to 6,000 using seated and standing areas.
The Amadeus Diva M² has a three-way enclosure, bi-amplified design, with two active drivers. The enclosure features one direct radiating 8-inch neodymium low frequency transducer, mounted in a bass reflex enclosure, and two neodymium diaphragm compression high frequency drivers, which are coaxially-mounted with a single acoustical output, and coupled to an individual proprietary waveguide. Its unique diffraction horn has been optimised to get a vertical dispersion of 10° and a horizontal dispersion of 100°.
The HF assembly delivers extended frequency response with high-efficiency and a wide dispersion pattern. To obtain full-spectrum sound in the Seine Musicale live event spaces, the new Diva M² Sub was paired with the Diva M² speakers. Each is using with two 12-inch transducers mounted in a bass reflex enclosure.
The design of the Amadeus Diva M² speaker array needed to solve some particular issues, ‘Achieving a perfectly uniform coverage and an excellent spectral quality throughout the whole listening area were especially challenging within the Auditorium – because of its 360° configuration,’ Dinant says. ‘Within the Grande Seine area, bleachers are segmented subspaces, each of them with different slopes, and to top it off they are asymmetric. The bleacher’s curvature is almost exponential and the distance from the stage to the last spectator is almost 50m.’
The Diva M² speaker arrays solved all of the La Seine Musicale’s sonic requirements.
See also:
Amadeus at the Philharmonie de Paris
