"The new concert hall is primarily designed for chamber music," explained Elena Shabalina, acoustic engineer with Aris-Pro, a leading Russian pro audio specialist. "We were asked to tender at the beginning of last year. At the time a proposal for a sound reinforcement system had already been devised by an external audio consultant, and so Mr. Vladimir Fomin from the Department of Culture of Moscow City, the body responsible for the School, asked us to review and update the original design."
"The system tender proved to be far more than was required for such a venue. This is a small concert hall ideal for Chamber music, and caters for audiences of approximately 200. Considering the intended performance genre the acoustic architect Michael Lannie had done a splendid job, creating a lively environment with just the right amount of reverberation (1.6secs) to make the music bright and pleasing to the ear; piano sounds really great. This is not a room that wanted a lot of sound reinforcement, a PA system was only needed to give some light reinforcement to speech based events, and for playback systems when the room is used for dance training."
Aris Pro proposed a much smaller alternative, a system of d&b audiotechnik Qi10 loudspeakers and Qi subwoofers flown above stage, with additional Ci80s for surround. "We find d&b products perform exceptionally well in terms of speech intelligibility and conform to their predicted coverage. The Qi-Series, like all d&b systems, is also very musical, an extremely important consideration in such a sensitive environment. Of course the authorities liked the smaller design as it is visually much less intrusive and fully in keeping with the aesthetic of Jakov Belopolsky, laureate of Lenin's Award, and principal architect of the school's redevelopment."
(Jim Evans)
