| Yes, it's a relatively small hall. It sounds very nice for orchestral and chamber music though, and works well for amplified music as well. The roof is adjustable in five sections from 10 to 15 meters height using 50 synhronized winches. The construction weighs 94 metric tons and audience can not stay inside during the adjustment. We are holding a sound design/sound art concert in the spring where we will install contact mics and ambience mics to a surround rig in the foyer so people can experience it, though!
Upon height adjustment, the entire reverbation time curve is adjusted - the character of the reverberation is not altered. The lateral reflections are decreased when the height is lowered. Measures have been taken to minimize the influence of audience vs empty hall, and has been fairly successful - between 250 and 500 ms which is certainly audible but not drastic compared to similar venues.
My C essay will most probably relate to preferred RT60 values for certain kinds of music in the hall.
The entire construction is made of wood, and was awarded a prize upon it's inauguration. It's a shoebox design with slightly angled walls. Regarding size; a sidenote which i sourced from our acoustics dept at the university in Luleå is that it's easier to design for good acoustics in smaller
concert halls since the distribution of energy is more even and the acoustic output of the musicians is limited, leading to a better distribution of sound for a smaller audience.
I do agree that the organ seems a bit oversized - but I also think that it's important to keep in mind that the people designing the organ have lots of experience doing these kind of installations. Hopefully the end result will be beautiful, and hopefully the construction of the organ will not eat too much valuable reverberation time...
Edit: Also; just because there are 200 stops, it doesn't mean you have to use them all - the aim, I believe, is to create an instrument suited for a wide variety of music where you can choose the necessary stops and not feel limited by the instrument to a certain reperoire.
The organ will be inaugurated april 12th, 2012 - see you there (here!). |