In the new Elisabeth-Herz-Kremenak plenary hall of Austria’s Congress Centrum Alpbach (CCA), Austria, an Amadeus Active Acoustics system has been installed to adapt the the room acoustics to a wide range of uses and two different room sizes.

3D Audio may be used for special events and presentations, while the rear of the hall can be divided into three seminar rooms can be created by deploying dividing walls – the system turns the hall into a truly multifunctional venue for lectures, galas and concert events spanning symphonic works and church music.

The hall now seats up to 750, having reopened after a major extension of the former centre in late 2016. The CCA is known as the venue of the European Forum Alpbach and, for three weeks in August and September each year, turns a small village in Tirol into an international think pool with several thousand participants.

Amadeus Active Acoustics is a modern regenerative acoustic system for variable room acoustics. In the plenary hall, signals from the stage and the auditorium are picked up by 20 DPA microphones, processed and mixed in the Amadeus processor, and then fed to 62 loudspeakers – 18 Renkus-Heinz CFX61 full-range boxes plus four CFX12S subwoofers in the ceiling, and 22 CFX41 in the walls at the front of the hall. In addition, 18 Atlas Sound FAP63T-W speakers are set into the ceiling of the separable seminar rooms. The loudspeakers are powered by five Bittner 8X100, three Bittner 8X200 and a Bittner 4X600 Dual amplifiers. Signal transmission to the Amadeus processor is via four Atlas Sound Dante BlueBridge processors.

The Amadeus system has been set up with six presets – Off, Opera, Small Orchestra (optimised for Mozart), Symphonic Orchestra, Church Music and Sacral Music. The parameters are selected by a custom web interface.

The system was ordered by Alpbach Tourismus and the CCA. AV Technik Waidhofer, Judenburg, Austria, supplied the Bittner amplifiers to PKE Electronics, Vienna, who were in charge of the system technology and installation. Dipl-Ing Jamilla Balint, TU Graz, designed the room acoustics. Rohde-BeSB, Salzburg, designed the electroacoustics and programmed and produced the 3D Audio sound scenes. Distributor of the Amadeus system is MediasPro, Eckersdorf, Germany.