Amadeus worked closely over several years with Ateliers Jean Nouvel, the internationally based architecture company founded by French architecture star Jean Nouvel, along with theatre consultants at dUCKS Scéno to create, develop and optimize the most efficient speaker systems for the Philharmonie's high-level of acoustical, architectural, and aesthetic requirements.
Gaetan Byk, marketing manager at Amadeus describes the challenges of the philharmonic project, "The Philharmonie de Paris was probably the longest and the most complex project that we have completed over the last 10 years at Amadeus. It is also among the most rewarding.
"We take a great pride in having designed and provided systems on a par with this masterpiece of architectural design, technological challenges, and acoustic achievements," Gaetan BYK adds. "It was a great pleasure for us, and an intense experience, to work for over four years on the design of the exclusive PA systems in close collaboration with people with such extensive professional profiles, skills, experiences, and backgrounds."
With previous works including the Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre, the DR Koncerthuset in Copenhagen and the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum, Jean Nouvel, enlisted the services of two leading acoustic consultants, Sir Harold Marshall of New Zealand and Yasuhisa Toyota of Japan and the French theatre consultant, dUCKS Scéno, for scenography design.
Amadeus' director of research & development, Michel Deluc, reveals the starting point of the prolific collaboration between dUCKS Scéno and Amadeus, "Our collaboration began with the development of 14 customized point source speakers for the acoustical canopy of the Symphonic Hall."
Suspended over the auditorium is a mobile canopy, resembling flat cloud, that can be positioned at different heights above the stage and large areas of curtains that can be deployed differently for different repertories and genres.
Michel Deluc continues, "The requirements were practically unrealizable. The technical, thermal and acoustical constraints pushed us to develop two new series of self-powered and EtherSound-enabled point source loudspeakers, with custom associated accessories to optimize both the directivity control and the mobility of the speakers."
The newly developed speaker series includes the PdP 10 ES and PdP 12 ES speakers (PdP for Philharmonie de Paris) that ensure perfectly uniform coverage and an excellent spectral quality throughout the Grande Auditorium's seating for 2,400 listeners. The sound is evenly distributed between the floor seating area and on the 'floating' balconies around the central stage.
The new large-capacity Philharmonie symphonic concert hall (2,400 seats) is based on the concept of envelopment. The room consists of two nested chambers - an inner floating seating area producing visual and acoustical intimacy between audience and performer, and an outer space with its own architectural and acoustical presence.
With the large rehearsal space being as much of a performance space as a practice area that can accommodate large ensembles, the Philharmonie de Paris employs its own FOH engineer, Bruno Morain. He explains, "Each time Amadeus engineers design a monitoring speaker or a live SR system, one gets the idea that research is always oriented to get a mus
