Barony Rosendal -new festival at new concerthall

“The best conference ever” was Raf Orlofskys final words (Sort of Samaranch at Lillehammer 1994).

Auditorium Acoustics Conference, organized by the Institute of Acoustics. This conference was the 9th in a series of special interest in sals acoustics, which is held every two years. No parallel sessions. All sitting in the same room for three days. This year was the “sold out” with about 150 participants – something similar has not happened before.

The conference room was in the basement of the new big concert hall in Paris – Philharmonie. 2400 seats and much expectations and advance discussion on it was ordered something unique and innovative (remember we are in Paris). The audience all around is nothing new, but it has made a lucky streak by doing the Christchurch Town Hall, build encircling “tribunes” defining an intimate space inside a large volume.
Conference participants impression was very divided, depending on where you sat, which can also be expected from pictures and drawings of the courtroom. Some were almost indignant because so many of the places perceived as useless, and that it is perceived as trickery when you sort of have ordered a saddle at 2400 Place the.
I estimated the number of places which was behind the line defined by the stageline to be 800, ie 1/3 of all seats. And they were not cheaper for the reason. In my view, should such spaces cost “1 Euro” and be offered to students, people with bad advice, or to people who are late to buy tickets and who think this is better than nothing. With such assumptions one would probably have planned another type saddle.

My space on the 2nd balcony like that about “at 2” as seen from the podium gave a nice experience. The best seats were as usual they sals floor and on the 1st balcony behind again. As in the classic halls, just that there does sals form a larger number of such good seats. Paradox number 1 is that one can obtain a larger number of seats of the highest listening quality in an auditorium where the total number of seats is less.
Man has succeeded in creating short distances between podium and audience, theoretically, since no sight lines are longer than 32 meters. Paradox number 2 is that the psychological distance experienced on a balcony can be greater than on the floor or in the amphitheater in other halls, when the theoretical distance is the same.
The reverberation time in empty hall is long over 3 seconds, while EDT decreases significantly towards higher frequencies (about 2s at 1000Hz). With the audience present is T30 = 2.5s. Clarity is on average within the recommendation, C80 = -0.7dB. Conditions on the podium is apparently good and then some.