Bølgen Kulturhus, a multipurpose venue in Larvik, Norway that welcomes thousands of patrons annually for concerts, cinema, and theatre presentations as well as conferences and events, was recently outfitted with a new Adamson Systems Engineering E-Series PA in its main hall that’s named “Storsalen.”
Previously, Norwegian distributor Benum provided Bølgen with Adamson rigs for the venue’s other two, smaller performance/event spaces: eight IS10, four IS119 subs, four PC5, and two D120 amplifiers in “Sanden Scene,” aloing with and eight S7, two IS119 and two D120 for “Blåboksen.”
In the Storshalen space, Benum now has a system comprising 20 E12 enclosures (flown 10 per side), six E219 subs, and four S7p loudspeakers for lip and infills; all powered by D-Series amplifiers by Lab Gruppen (eight D120 amplifiers for the E12, two D200s for the E219 and one D80 for the S7p). Additionally, a Lake LM44 is deployed at frong of house to create a redundant digital network with all audio distribution handled via Dante and a dedicated analog backup.
Benum, which will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2021, has been representing Adamson Systems Engineering exclusively in Norway since 2015, and in Sweden since 2017. The company’s Sales Manager, Kenneth Vadset, notes, “We got a flying start with an S-Series installation at the Olavshallen concert hall in Trondheim in 2016, which was the first Adamson installation we did, and from there word spread, so we’ve since gone into many cultural houses and theatres.”
As is the case with many of his colleagues at Benum, Vadset is a touring audio engineer and, based on his own experiences on the road, believes that any incoming act will be satisfied with the E-Series system: “I’ve toured a lot and mixed in many Norwegian cultural houses, including Bølgen and many other venues. Frankly, some didn’t have the quality or the size of systems we needed, so we would always carry our own rig to supplement or replace the house system. That won’t happen at Bølgen.”
The implementation of Adamson’s products throughout all the main performance spaces provides Bølgen with consistent audio infrastructure that make it easy for the venue to reconfigure the systems as needed for virtually any application. “By using Adamson across all of our stages, it gives us the same audio signature throughout the entire house,” says Bølgen’s House Tech Manager Dagfinn Apelland.
Applications range widely, from film screenings to corporate/community events to heavy metal shows and everything in between. To serve that multi-purpose mandate the room itself is designed to be reconfigured to suit the needs of the event and the audience in equal measure on a per-show basis. In one scenario the stage area is at surface level, with sloped seating rising from the edge of the performance area to the rear of the room. In another, roughly half of the seats can be retracted and stored under the rear upper seating, creating room for a stage to be constructed and a ‘standing room’ audience area.
Consequently, there are two sub configurations. For a ‘flat’ stage, three E219 are flown in a cardioid configuration above the centre of the stage area. When a raised stage is brought in, however, all six may be used, ground-stacked three per side in cardioid configurations.
“The feedback from people that have used the Adamson systems at Bølgen, the E12 system especially, is fantastic,” Vadset concludes. “Almost everybody has said Bølgen is the best sounding cultural house in Norway.”
