The city of Wien, Oesterreich (Vienna, Austria) has been a cultural nexus for music and the arts for centuries, drawing an international array of artists to a creative scene that is as vibrant today as it was in the Vienna of 400 years ago.
The Arena Wien is one of the city’s largest and most famed live performance centers, recently celebrating its 30th year as part of the city’s bustling music scene. The legendary entertainment complex plays host to a wide range of programs, including concerts featuring international artists from James Brown to Dinosaur Jr., from Santo Barrio to Gnarls Barkley. The club also features first-run movies, spoken word, and theatrical presentations. With four separate venues running a full calendar of events, the arena is rarely dark, and has a long-standing reputation as having one of the city’s best-sounding halls.
That reputation was further reinforced by the club’s recent decision to upgrade their two largest venues with new audio systems from Meyer Sound . After many months spent auditioning line array systems from numerous manufacturers, the arena’s Open Air club chose to be fitted with two arrays consisting of three MILO® high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers and a MILO 120 high-power expanded coverage curvilinear array loudspeaker in each. Two 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers complete each array.
“It’s been a longstanding goal of mine to find the perfect system for the hall, one that would really deliver the ultimate sonic performance for the space, regardless of the musical genre,” explained Thomas Loeffler, Wien Arena’s chief engineer. Loeffler, a veteran of live and studio sound, has manned the faders and designed systems for a wide range of artists including Peter Gabriel, Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and James Brown. “We spent several months trying out a wide range of systems at the arena. Based on the results of our measurements and testing, and, equally important, based on my own ears, the clear choice for us and the arena was the Meyer MILO array.”
Inside the arena’s Große Halle, an identically configured array of MILO, MILO 120 and 700-HP subwoofers has been installed. Both venues employ 40-channel Midas XL200 consoles at front-of-house, and Yamaha M3000 desks for monitors.
“With as many large productions as we do at the arena, we can’t afford to have any downtime for our equipment,” Loeffler remarks. “The Meyer gear provides us with the level of dependability we need and expect on a daily basis. The self-powered aspect of the system saves us a tremendous amount of time and energy in setting up and tearing down. And Meyer’s support is some of the best available anywhere; MAPP Online Pro™ (acoustical prediction software) is really an invaluable tool for setup and alignment of the system.”
The new sound systems in the Open Air and Große Halle have been undisputed hits with the fans as well. “We’ve gotten a lot of compliments on the sound since we installed the MILO systems,” says Loeffler.
“MILO is an industry standard, and Meyer Sound is a well-respected brand in Austria,” Loeffler concludes. “Any venue and any sound company would be pleased to be able to offer Meyer gear in their inventory.”