The Paris Conference Center chooses SSL technology to renew its sound system

After two years of research, The Paris Conference Center has installed Solid State Logic's Live L500 audio console in its main auditorium to optimize the proximity of 150 productions that are celebrated every year in this venue.

Located at the western end of the district 17, near the Arc de Triomphe, the Congress Palace (Congress Center) Paris has two television studios, 20 conference rooms, 85 meeting rooms and three smaller auditoriums. The main auditorium, which has 3.723 locations and is managed by Viparis Group, has offered an average of 150 events every year, including internationally famous ballets, operas, symphonies and pop concerts.

After two years of research, The technical team decided to renew the audio console with one that could adequately handle the important productions and rapid changes that are often necessary in an environment like this.. The option chosen was the Live L500 model from Solid State Logic, whose products it distributes Reads.

“The challenge was to have a sound system that satisfied the size and functionality necessary for our clients.. We need to be sure that we have products of the highest quality, capable of satisfying everyone, both now and in the future. Finally, after two years of research, “We have chosen the SSL Live L500 console”, explain the members of the sound team at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, Laurent Maury, Sylvain Demay y Thomas Guardenti.

Used for all concerts and conferences held in the main auditorium, including those that require connections to external equipment, such as television productions and links for corporate events, The Live L500 console has been installed to integrate the venue's existing audio infrastructure.

The fan-shaped stalls of the main auditorium do not have an amphitheater and the mixing area is located 27 meters from the stage, behind a central hallway. The speakers cover the audience through two arrays on the left and right, down fills, un cluster central, floor fills, front fills and various subwoofers.

In the backstage, two stage boxes of 32×32, 5U, de SSL, with a total of 96 canales (including the 32 console inputs) are redundantly connected via a coaxial Madi connection to an SSL Madi Blacklight II hub that connects everything to the FOH mix via a single fiber cable per side.

“Even though we are always in the same theater, Working at the Palacio de Congresos is like being on tour, due to constant exposure to different engineers and ways of mixing. For this reason, It was also important for us to acquire a console that was known throughout the world. La SSL Off Line Setup Application (Sauce) of the console has revealed itself to be a particularly important element for us. Ensures that guest engineers can familiarize themselves with the console and organize their session before arriving.”, Demay clarifies.

The team points out the wide variety of software features of the console as one of the main reasons that led to its selection. “Layer Manager is a fantastic tool, which is very easy to use and is really useful for organizing the console the way we want. Visiting engineers immediately become very comfortable organizing inputs and outputs on their fader layers and banks., so that they can approach production as they wish”, Añade Maury.

Guardenti points out that it's great to have the AutoMix and Dynamic-EQ insertion tools built in and that flexibility in the workflow is important. “Each of us has our own preferences and way of working., “So the combination of touch screens and encoders allows everyone to work as they wish.”.