Constellation's power to optimize the room's acoustic signature for any use - from conferences and banquets to amplified and acoustic concerts spanning all musical genres - has expanded utilization of the venue to encompass a broader spectrum of events.
"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," says Rolf Skogstrand, event manager for the Grieghallen complex. "In addition, Constellation has presets for acoustical environments to enhance many types of amplified music as well."
The Constellation system was installed by Bright Norway with Arthur Botnevik serving as project manager.
Prior to Constellation, the room's use as a concert venue was limited to a relatively narrow range of amplified pop-rock styles, but now Peer Gynt Hall not only expands its own range of hosting options but also opens up more potential bookings for Grieghallen's 1600-seat dedicated concert hall.
"Grieghallen is the home of the Bergen Philharmonic, and naturally they prefer to rehearse in their familiar acoustical environment," notes Skogstrand. "Unfortunately, that means some events that require set-up during daytime 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 1500 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 the patented 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 new 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.
(Jim Evans)
