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Oslo, Norway | December, 2009 – US President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech marked a glittering début for Oslo City Council Hall’s new, low-profile Renkus-Heinz Iconyx IC32 Digitally Steerable Array system. Although scarcely visible, the IC32s and matching subwoofers handled both the Nobel laureate’s speech and world-class musical performances equally effortlessly.
Benum, Renkus-Heinz’s Norwegian distributor, had been contracted by Oslo City Council to install a system capable of delivering high intelligibility throughout the spacious marble-floored hall. The system was specified by sound and acoustics consultant COWI; work lead by project manager Lars Ødemark with the assistance of senior consultants Bård Støfringsdal and Frode Bye.
The main audio system comprises a pair of Renkus-Heinz IC32 digitally steerable arrays, supplemented by CF121M active monitors and PN212 active subwoofers. The Iconyx cabinets are custom colored to blend in with the surrounding architecture, mounted flush to the walls.
The IC32s had been installed this summer with fine tuning performed using Renkus-Heinz BeamWare and SDA’s EASERA (Electronic & Acoustic System Evaluation and Response Analysis) software.
In charge of sound for the Nobel Peace Prize presentation was Benum’s senior audio team, headed by sound engineers Morten Jorseth and Erik Bergersen, with project design technician Sverre Jøssund, Ronald Hernes and Peder Krohn from Benum.
Mixing was handled on an Allen & Heath iLive 112 with an iDR-32 I/O, feeding the internally powered Renkus-Heinz IC32s.
President Obama’s acceptance speech, through a pair of AKG C747s, and the musical performances from soprano Solveig Kringlebotn, bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding, and world renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang. were all delivered through the Renkus-Heinz Iconyx system.
Benum’s Sverre Jøssund commented: “It was a very exciting day, with an incredible atmosphere. As a company we are very experienced with large events but the expectation on this occasion was exceptional. Several billion people around the world tuned in to the speech, and of course the live audience in the City Hall was full of famous politicians and dignitaries.
The hall itself has very hard acoustics with highly reflective surfaces, which is why we specified Iconyx for it in the first place. It was the perfect sound system for such an occasion.”