Opened in late 2015, Malmö Live is a major new music venue, conference centre and hotel development in South Sweden’s the economical and cultural centre. The complex is a joint public/private sector venture, with the concert hall in municipal ownership while the conference centre and hotel are part of the Clarion Hotels group. To serve the main Concert Hall’s audio requirements, Arva Trading has installed a d&B audiotechnik loudspeaker system and SSL L300 live console for FOH mixing.
The Malmö Symphony Orchestra performs weekly at the venue, though shares it with visiting acts from all music genres. ‘They call it the “complete music house”,’ says Ronny Sjöstrand, Technical Manager at Arva Trading and Project Manager for Malmö Live. ‘They put on everything from heavy metal to classical.’
Sjöstrand has been working on the venue’s audio installation for eight months, and has overseen the complete project. More than anything, he is excited by the exceptional sound quality in the hall. ‘It sounds so great,’ he reports. ‘We have a 1.5dB level variation across every one of the 1,600 seats – which is amazing.’
The PA is a new d&b V-Series loudspeaker system with all wireless based on Sony DWX digital interconnection. Sjöstrand was keen that Malmö Live should select an audio console that could do justice to the room, the PA, and the artists: ‘Originally, they hadn’t considered an SSL,’ he notes. ‘But because of their emphasis on sound quality, I encouraged them to try an L300. They compared it with their existing digital console and immediately heard the difference – the SSL sounds so much better.’
In addition, Arva set up a training programme for Malmö Live staff so they could get the most out of the new console and pass that knowledge on to visiting engineers.
The L300 is mounted on a motorised platform that rises from below floor level into the auditorium when needed, creating an FOH position about 20m from the stage. When a purely acoustic performance is scheduled, the FOH position is lowered and replaced with additional seats. A Blacklight II system – SSL’s high-bandwidth Madi protocol – connects the console to the stage where there are SSL Stageboxes providing 128 inputs.
Since opening, the Malmö Live Concert Hall has been busy hosting performances across a huge range of styles, and widely praised for its production standards: ‘They have a fantastic room, fantastic microphones and a fantastic PA,’ says Sjöstrand. ‘They needed a fantastic console, otherwise all those other things would have been wasted. The SSL L300 is that console.’
