Bergen’s Grieghallen has equipped its Peer Gynt Hall with a Meyer Sound Constellation acoustic system, has expanding use of the leading Norway venue to encompass a broader spectrum of events.
Benefitting from an ongoing renovation project, the hall is the principal multi-use venue within the complex, hosting a wide range of commercial, artistic and cultural events, including conferences, exhibitions and banquets as well as classical and pop music concerts, operas and dance performances. Constellation’s ability to optimise the room’s acoustic signature will benefit many of these applications.
‘With the addition of Constellation, Peer Gynt Hall has become an extraordinary room for any type of acoustical music performance, including chamber music, brass ensembles, piano recitals and a cappella choral music,’ confirms Event Manager, Rolf Skogstrand. ‘In addition, Constellation has presets for acoustical environments to enhance many types of amplified music as well.’
Prior to the Constellation installation – undertaken by Bright Norway with Arthur Botnevik serving as Project Manager – the room’s use as a concert venue was limited to a relatively narrow range of amplified pop/rock events, but it is now opening up potential bookings for the 1,600-seat dedicated concert hall.
‘Grieghallen is the home of the Bergen Philharmonic, and naturally they prefer to rehearse in their familiar acoustical environment,’ Skogstrand explains. ‘Unfortunately, this means that some events that require set-up during daytime so rehearsals cannot be booked for that same evening. Now we have a preset in Constellation that recreates the stage sound of the main hall, allowing us to move symphony rehearsals to the Peer Gynt and thus opening availability of the main hall.’
The Peer Gynt hall is a multi-purpose space with flexible seating and staging, accommodating up to 750 with concert seating or up to 1,500 standing with the tribune fully retracted. The space is also popular for meetings, receptions and banquets. Multiple presets in Constellation tailor the acoustical signature for use with any type of music, or for optimum speech intelligibility, and for any seating configuration.
Engineered with three discrete reverberation zones, the Constellation system is powered by a Meyer Sound D-Mitri digital audio platform for hosting VRAS acoustical algorithms. Ambient sensing is accomplished by room-wide arrays of 53 miniature microphones, with the desired mix of early reflections and late reverberations reproduced by 243 loudspeakers (Stella-4C, MM-4XP, UP-4XP) and 14 subwoofers (UMS-1XP and MM-10XP).
To complement Constellation, Bright Norway is providing a Meyer Sound direct reinforcement system as a long-term rental. The main arrays of six per-side Leopard compact linear line array loudspeakers, bolstered in deep bass by a quartet of 1100-LFC low frequency control elements, replace a venerable Meyer Sound installation based on MSL-2 loudspeakers that dates from the hall’s opening in 1996.
