The recently opened La Seine Musicale music complex just outside Paris center is a marvel of performance spaces. Amadeus, based in Paris, one of the manufacturers of high-end sound reinforcement systems, was chosen to equip the two main concert halls of the Seine Musicale building complex with their specially developed speaker systems.
As the sole speaker manufacturer chosen for the momentous project, Amadeus also installed their speakers in multiple rehearsal spaces throughout the new music center. La Seine Musicale is a large-scale cultural public infrastructure, over 36,000 square meters, committed to host every type of musical performance.
The exterior of La Seine Musicale at the end of Seguin Island. Crédit: Gilles Letang
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, elaborates on the particular 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.”
9 DIVA M² enclosures. The shape and modern look of DivaM² definitely help it to find his way into this fabulous space.
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 explains, “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 center, the beating heart of Hauts-de-Seine’ Culture Valley,” says 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 materialize, the La Seine Musicale project needed to gather skills, commitment, and ambition.”
Auditorium Hall. Crédit: Olivier Ravoire
The design of La Seine Musicale building was tasked to Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who partnered with Jean de Gastines. Outside, its rounded shape evokes an egg. Inside, the concert hall is in the style of a ‘vineyard’. Listeners are spread on several levels surrounding the stage, thus creating a proximity feeling with the musicians.
The surfaces on which the seats are banked create early reflections radiating from the orchestra to the audience, enhancing the intimacy.
Designed with the same precision used for a musical instrument, with painstaking work on the materials, the auditorium evokes an art of craftsmanship. Treated like a jewel, the rounded shell of the auditorium is protected by an outer envelope made of a lacing of glued laminated spruce wood, mimicking the image of a bird’s nest.
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 utilizing sitting and standing areas.
A partial view of the Grande Seine. Photo Olivier Ravoire
The Amadeus DIVA M² installed in La Seine Musicale is the newest middle format line source system of the Company’s DIVA Series. The system has a 3-way enclosure, bi-amplified design, with two active drivers. The enclosure features one direct radiating 8” neodymium low frequency transducer, mounted in a bass-reflex enclosure, and two neodymium diaphragm compression high frequency drivers, which are coaxially-mounted with a single acoustical output, and coupled to an individual proprietary waveguide. Its unique diffraction horn has been optimized to get a vertical dispersion of 10° and a horizontal dispersion of 100°.
The DIVA M² array speaker offers a revolutionary HF (High Frequency) ensemble tweeter featuring a unique combination of extended frequency response, high efficiency, and wide dispersion pattern. To obtain an optimal full-spectrum sound quality at the Seine Musicale live event spaces, the new DIVA M² SUB was paired with the DIVA M² speakers. Each subwoofer is equipped with two 12-inch transducers, mounted in a bass-reflex enclosure to reproduce the lowest sonic sound sources.
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-degree configuration,” reflects 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-meters.” The new DIVA M² speaker arrays solved each of these sonic requirements perfectly.
For more information visit : La Seine Musicale and new DIVA M²
