Amadeus has designed and installed speaker systems for the two main concert halls within the recently opened musical cultural centre, La Seine Musicale in Paris. As the sole speaker manufacturer chosen for the project, Amadeus also installed its speakers in multiple rehearsal spaces.
La Seine Musicale is a large-scale cultural public infrastructure, over 36,000sqm, committed to host every type of musical performance. The building houses two main concert halls, five recording studios, and several rehearsal spaces — the main ‘Auditorium’ has seating for 1,150 guests. This hall is the symbol and the signature of the building with acoustics designed by acousticians Nagata Acoustics and Jean-Paul Lamoureux, and features a speaker system custom designed by Amadeus.
Mickael Dinant, the head of the scenography department and concert halls construction at Bouygues Construction, on the electro-acoustical challenges of the new sound system install: “We attached a great importance to the equipment reliability, performance, and flexibility for the Auditorium and the Grande Seine. These aspects were very challenging, and the modularity as well, because we had to be able to change from one configuration to another, very quickly and easily. In this sense, the manufacturer’s involvement, as well as their professional integrity, were key aspects to guarantee a final result matching the Seine Musicale’s goal, of both prestige and ambition.”
To overcome these challenges Dinant explains that it was only possible due “to the professionalism of Videlio, which was in charge of the audiovisual integration, and to Amadeus, who designed, developed, and built the speaker systems. Amadeus have been completely involved in the project during the past 3-years. With Amadeus’ inventiveness and expertise, they developed new speaker array enclosures perfectly adapted to our needs, and played a major role in the success of this magical venue.”
To create a solution for the Seine Musicale project, Amadeus completely redesigned its middle format ‘DIVA’ speaker array series, which already equips some of the major musical, theatrical and public institutions – both national and international – including the Philharmonie de Paris, La Gaîté Lyrique, the National Assembly of South Korea, and the National Theatre of Brittany, among many others. The Seine Musicale is the first install anywhere in the world featuring the newly released DIVA M² (pronounced DIVA M Squared) array speakers.
Gaetan Byk, marketing manager at Amadeus explained: “The DIVA M² is not a simple evolution of the DIVA M speaker series created in 2006, it is a revolution, a total and radical reinvention. This new version raises the bar much higher. Its new design incorporates a dramatic collection of over one hundred major changes, compared to the previous DIVA model.”
“The structure of the low, medium, and high frequency transducers, the geometry of the cabinets, their internal and external structures, the active filtering design, and more — basically all major acoustic, electro-acoustic, electronic, and mechanical components have been completely rethought, reinvented,” adds Byk.
“The location was not picked by chance. It is an island amid the Seine, the centre, the beating heart of Hauts-de-Seine’ Culture Valley,” said Patrick Devedjian, president of the ‘Hauts-de-Seine’ departmental council. “Thanks to La Seine Musicale, the Seguin Island becomes its lighthouse. Beyond the symbol, it is a reality. To materialise, the La Seine Musicale project needed to gather skills, commitment, and ambition.”
Besides the main Auditorium, dedicated to acoustical music, La Seine Musicale can host a wide range of shows. The ‘Grande Seine’ performance space was designed to be simple and versatile, and it hosts every type of equipment needed for any type of modern pop music concert, musical, or other live or corporate event. Equipped with three different stages and retractable tiers, the Grande Seine performance space has a capacity of 4,000 seats, or up to 6,000 utilising sitting and standing areas.
The new design of the Amadeus DIVA M² speaker array needed to solve some particular issues. “Achieving a perfectly uniform coverage and an excellent spectral quality throughout the whole listening area were especially challenging within the Auditorium – because of its 360° configuration,” reflected Dinant. “Within the Grande Seine area, bleachers are segmented subspaces, each of them with different slopes, and to top it off they are asymmetric. The bleacher’s curvature is almost exponential and the distance from the stage to the last spectator is almost 50-metres.”
Main picture: Gilles Letang
