Officially opened in August 2015, Malmö Live is a new music venue, conference center, and hotel development in the Swedish city of Malmö. The complex is a joint public and private sector venture with the concert hall in municipal ownership while the conference center and hotel are part of the Clarion Hotels group.
To compliment the facility’s technical standards and high-profile repertoire, Arva Trading AB has installed a Solid State Logic L300 live console at the front of house position in the main Concert Hall.
The Malmö Symphony Orchestra performs weekly at the venue, though shares it with many other visiting acts from all music genres. “They call it the ‘complete music house’ says Ronny Sjöstrand, technical manager at Arva Trading AB and project manager for Malmö Live. “They put on everything from heavy metal to classical.”
Sjöstrand has been working on the Malmö Live audio installation for eight months and has overseen the complete project. More than anything, he is excited by the exceptional sound quality in the hall. “It sounds so great,” he says. “We have a 1.5dB level variation across every one of the 1600 seats, which is amazing.”
The PA is a new d&b V-Series system, and all wireless provision uses the Sony DWX digital system. Sjöstrand was keen that Malmö Live should select an audio console that could do justice to the room, the PA, and the artists. “Originally, they hadn’t considered an SSL,” he notes. “But because of their emphasis on sound quality, I encouraged them to try an L300.
“They compared it with their existing digital console and immediately heard the difference – the SSL sounds so much better.” In addition, Arva set up a training program for Malmö Live staff so they could get the most out of the new console and pass that knowledge on to visiting engineers.
The L300 is mounted on a motorized platform that rises from below floor level into the auditorium when it is needed, creating an front of house position about 20 meters from the stage. When a purely acoustic performance is scheduled, the front of house position is lowered and replaced with additional seats. A Blacklight II system – SSL’s high bandwidth MADI protocol – connects the console to the stage where there are SSL Stageboxes providing 128 inputs.
Since opening its doors, the Malmö Live Concert Hall has been incredibly busy, hosting many performances across a huge range of styles, and widely praised for its production quality. “They have a fantastic room, fantastic microphones, and a fantastic PA,” says Sjöstrand. “They needed a fantastic console, otherwise all those other things would have been wasted. The SSL L300 is that console.”