Many older opera houses have short reverberation times which make sung words sound clear but the orchestra sound dry. However, modern opera houses tend to be more reverberant, to produce a more concert-like orchestral sound. This balance is what Arup’s client wanted for its Oslo home.
Adopting a novel auditorium cross-section – narrow at low level and wider above – helped to achieve the specified long reverberation time of at least 1.7 seconds. To arrive at this design, the Arup team used extensive computer and physical scale modelling of the auditorium and assessed design decisions using SoundLab, an innovative design tool developed by the firm.
SoundLab produces an accurate 3D sound experience that allows clients, users, architects and designers to listen to music in the proposed design and compare the sound quality against different world-class auditoria. It even gives the option of listening from different seats in the virtual auditorium.