OSLO – In preparation for President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and related music events, the sound system at Oslo City Hall was upgraded with Allen & Heath digital mixing and audio distribution systems and a Renkus-Heinz Iconyx IC32 Digitally Steerable Array system.
For the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Concert at the Oslo Spektrum, meanwhile, Norwegian audio company AVAB-CAC deployed two Midas XL8 live performance systems and three PRO6 live audio systems for the live show and broadcast, making extensive use of AES50 networking.
The Oslo City Council, which had been looking for a new system capable of delivering better intelligibility throughout the large marble-floored Oslo City Hall, had contracted with Benum, Renkus-Heinz's Norwegian distributor, to design a permanently installed system. "The hall itself has very hard acoustics with highly reflective surfaces, which is why we specified Iconyx for it in the first place," said Benum's Sverre Jøssund.
The main audio system includes a pair of Renkus-Heinz IC32 digitally steerable arrays, supplemented by CF121M active monitors and PN212 active subwoofers. The Iconyx cabinets are custom colored to blend in with the surrounding architecture, mounted flush to the walls.
The IC32s had been installed this summer with fine tuning performed using Renkus-Heinz BeamWare and SDA's EASERA (Electronic & Acoustic System Evaluation and Response Analysis) software.
Benum's senior audio team, headed by sound engineers Morten Jorseth and Erik Bergersen, played a key role in the sound for the Nobel Peace Prize presentation, working with project design technician Sverre Jøssund, Ronald Hernes and Peder Krohn from Benum.
Mixing was handled on an Allen & Heath iLive 112 with an iDR-32 I/O, feeding the internally powered Renkus-Heinz IC32s. A total of five iDR-8 DSP matrix mixers were installed for audio distribution, accompanied by several PL units for remote control, including the PL-6 8-fader panel, PL-4 wallplates, and PL-8 logic control panels.
The venue has also installed Allen & Heath's iLive digital mixing system to manage live events, comprising an iDR10 MixRack digitally split to an iDR0 mini MixRack, with iLive-112 and iLive-80 Control Surfaces to manage FOH and monitors.
Along with Obama's acceptance speech, through a pair of AKG C747s, the event included musical performances from soprano Solveig Kringlebotn, bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding, and Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Norway's royal family and celebrities including actor Will Smith and country singer Toby Keith also attended the Peace Prize ceremony.
For the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Concert at the Oslo Spektrum, AVAB-CAC's setup was similar to the 2008 event, with three stages facilitating the rapid changeovers required for the live televised event. This year, however, a house band provided musical backing for three of the artists.
FOH duties were handled by two XL8s, one taking care of the 72-piece Norwegian Radio Orchestra and the house band, leaving the second console free for visiting engineers to mix their own artists, and for MCs Will and Jada Smith. This year's lineup included Donna Summer, Westlife, Wycliffe Jean and Amadou and Mariam.
To interface with the many audio sources, AVAB-CAC employed 192 channels of Midas DL431 active mic splitter, plus a number of Midas DL451 and DL351 modular I/O devices, totalling nearly 400 inputs, all of which were accessible to all five consoles via the AES50 network. The DL431 splitters also provided pristine audio feeds to the NRK TV trucks for simultaneous TV broadcast.
Stage sound was provided by three PRO6s, one for each of the three stages, supplying numerous in-ear mixes for bands and orchestra, as well as to the multiple floor monitors across all three stages. As well as mixing monitors for its own stage, each PRO6 was also used to create multiple stem mixes of its performance, which could then be accessed from the combined network by the other consoles. This was essential during the grand finale, when all the performers, plus the orchestra and a choir, spread across all three stages, needing to keep in time and in tune for the final number.
