The Norwegian port of Langesund plays host to the annual Skjærgardsgospel worship conference, a weekend-long festival of music, meetings and spiritual togetherness. Alcons equipment has helped to overcome the event’s difficult acoustics for the past three years.
The event takes place at Langesund’s Skjærgardshallen, a multi-purpose arena and conference facility on the waterfront.
“It is a difficult event for sound reinforcement, because the side and rear walls of Skjærgardshallen are highly reflective. It’s made worse by the fact that the Skjærgardsgospel stage is located on one of the long sides,’ says Eivind Fossnes Dahl, general manager and sound engineer at Audiopol Live, the company tasked with the event’s sound production.
“We listened to many different loudspeaker systems and chose the Alcons LR16 compact pro-ribbon line-array system purely because we knew it would be the right choice for the events we service. It has been such a success that we have since supplemented it with LR7 micro line-array, VR12 and VR8 compact monitor systems.’
The LR16 compact line-array comprises double eight-inch vented woofers and the proprietary six-inch RBN601 pro-ribbon mid/high frequency transducer.
Having known the Skjærgardssgospel worship leaders for many years, three years ago Audiopol Live was asked to supply the audio system for the event. They – and an Alcons system – have been fixtures ever since.
“Alcons is an excellent solution; because of the very fast transient response of the pro-ribbon’s mid- and high-frequencies, the intelligibility is excellent, even with such difficult acoustics. Meanwhile, the horizontal spread is so clear and sharp that you can be very accurate with which zones you want the speakers to cover, while other zones will be silent. Setting up the cardioid subs as a end-fire array also means that the rearward low frequency reflections don’t cause a problem,’ says Eivind.
This was the first year that Audiopol Live had used Alcons Sentinel amplified loudspeaker controllers at Skjærgardsgospel and Eivind was really pleased with how they performed.
“We have used Alcons ALC amplified loudspeaker controllers from the beginning and been very happy with what they provide. We have been excited about how the new Sentinel amplifiers could compare to the ALCs. We found that the sound quality was every bit as good, but with the weight of an amplifier rack being about 10% of an ALC rack, and the integrated digital system-drive processing it made our job a lot easier!’
