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Meyer Sound for Norwegian Music Awards
The 33rd annual, Spellemannprisen, Norway’s equivalent to the Grammy Awards, was held recently in the Oslo Spektrum with an audience of 3,000 in attendance and thousands more watching it broadcast live on Norwegian television. But only the audience in the famed hall was treated to hearing the presentations to and performances by Norway’s finest musical talent through a large Meyer Sound loudspeaker system.
A total of 16 live acts, ranging from pop, rock, and country to jazz and classical, performed on three different stages. To ensure complete coverage in the sizable venue and audio quality befitting the occasion, leading Norwegian audio company AVAB CAC supplied 18 M3D line array loudspeakers, eight M3D-Sub directional subwoofers and eight M2D compact curvilinear array loudspeakers. The needs of all three stages were served by this system.
“We had two clusters of nine M3D cabinets per side to cover the main area of the venue,” explains AVAB CAC’s Geir Østensjø. “Four M3D-Subs per side were ‘hidden’ under the stage and we used M2Ds for frontfill because of the wide stage configuration at the Spektrum (a full 25 meters from the left to right main clusters) and as coverage for the audience seated on the side tribune.”
The hall itself, a medium-large arena, has reasonable acoustics. However, the Spektrum’s exceptional width means that a capacity audience makes it necessary to have center and side clusters to guarantee even coverage. Sidefill loudspeakers are often flown at the Spektrum, but the Spellemanprisen show was different, Østensjø notes. “For this event, the audience area was reduced by hanging carpets on the sides and at the back of the seating area, which actually made the hall much drier and, for this show, gave better acoustics. In this case, we ground-stacked the M2Ds for the sides, as they didn’t have to cover as great a length as they normally would (in the Spektrum). There were also some issues with cameras positioned on cranes at the sides of the venue, so stacking the loudspeakers was an excellent solution.”
System drive units included the LD-3 compensating line driver, and the system was tuned with a SIM audio analyzer.
AVAB CAC used a DiGiCo D5 Live to mix the bands for the show because of the ability to store settings for each act and recall them instantly. Østensjø favors the analog appearance of the DiGiCo desk and feels that it offers him easy access to control parameters. A Midas H-2000 was also used for a 32-piece band that was on the programme.
The excitement of the crowd in the Spektrum signalled their approval of the audio quality, but Østensjø was delighted also to have pleased perhaps the toughest audience of all: “The comment from a very critical audience – the musicians - was that the sound was superb!”
5th April 2005
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