To match its acoustic excellence, the venue has installed a flexible loudspeaker solution from d&b audiotechnik. Amplification is needed for the recorded music used in ballet productions, and the venue also hosts rock and pop concerts. When it came to choosing a system, the audio team drew up a wish list.
‘We didn’t just want a system that could deliver consistently excellent sound for our productions,’ says Gerhard Hertzberg, Head of Sound at the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet. ‘We also wanted to be able to rig and unrig it quickly in multiple configurations to support different types of events, from ballet productions to rock concerts.’
The Oslo Opera House was inundated with proposals: ‘I think we had twelve companies who wanted to deliver the loudspeaker system, so we had a lot of options and a lot of documentation to look through,’ Hertzberg says. ‘Based on an in-depth analysis of all the offers, we picked a d&b audiotechnik loudspeaker system from local sound company Drammen Lyd, which was the one that met our needs the best.’
The system that Drammen proposed and deployed for the opera house can be reconfigured effortlessly for the show at hand, and additional loudspeakers can be added easily if necessary. Key components include Y-Series line array loudspeakers and V-Subs.
The full installation comprises 12 Y8 line array loudspeakers per side for the main LR system with six groundstacked V-Subs per side for rock events and three V-Subs per side for medium/soft applications. In addition, there is a centre hang of eight Y12 line array loudspeakers with two Y10P point-source loudspeakers for front fill. The system is driven by six d&b D80 amplifiers.
‘Three of us can rig or unrig the system in just 15 minutes, which makes it extremely fast and practical to set up for different types of productions,’ Hertzberg says. ‘We can rig the loudspeakers high up out of sight for the ballet, and bring them right down for rock concerts to provide the high volume and imaging needed.
‘d&b subwoofers use an innovative driver arrangement that creates a cardioid dispersion pattern, which requires just a single amplifier channel. This rejects energy towards the rear, and minimises the excitation of the reverberant field at low frequencies. There is also excellent transient response, which provides impeccable reproduction for the short percussive sounds often used in classical music.’
As well as providing sound for ballet performances, the d&b loudspeakers are used for touring productions to use. As a result, the system is paying for itself very quickly. ‘Now, all of our visiting artists are happy with the in-house system, which makes it easy to justify our investment with d&b.’
More: www.dbaudio.com
