d&b powers a new era of events at Les Salles du Carrousel with Magnum.

In the heart of Paris, inside the Palais du Louvre and just steps from Place Vendôme, Les Salles du Carrousel – one of the capital’s most prestigious event destinations – has become one of Europe’s first venues to feature d&b audiotechnik’s new CCL system. Selected by Magnum for its blend of power, precision and architectural elegance, d&b’s advanced directivity control and cardioid technologies deliver uncompromising clarity for every event in one of the world’s most celebrated settings.

Les Salles du Carrousel, housed beneath the iconic glass pyramid of the Louvre in the heart of Paris, offers 6,635m2 of modular interior space to cater for events of all types and sizes. As the site operator, Viparis has relied for many years on the expertise of Magnum – one of France’s leading audiovisual providers – to deliver high-end audiovisual solutions that elevate the prestige and excellence of the events it hosts. When the time came to renew the audio systems, Magnum selected the new CCL (Compact Cardioid Line Array) system from d&b audiotechnik to elevate the venue’s audio offering whilst respecting both Viparis’ and Magnum’s stringent sustainability criteria.

“The previous system, while functional, was over 10 years old, and starting to show signs of wear and tear,” explained Eduard Dubus, who heads up the technical team at Magnum. “We were looking to replace it with something more modern, and ideally visually discreet to cater for the wide variety of events held in Les Salles du Carrousel. After much discussion and several demos, it became clear that we didn’t need to look any further – the new CCL system from d&b was exactly what we needed.”

Magnum equipped three rooms with the new CCL system — Delorme and Le Nôtre, each accommodating up to 2,500 guests, and Gabriel, a smaller space situated directly behind Delorme that can be opened up to form one expansive hall. The challenge in all three spaces was a combination of low ceilings and reflective wooden floors, which generated unwanted sound reflections. Magnum also wanted a compact solution that required fewer loudspeakers than the previous point source system, which had been highly visible.

“Our new CCL system met all of Magnum’s requirements, significantly improving sound quality, intelligibility and visual impact,” said d&b’s technical project lead, Boris Jaquier-Laforge. “The superior directivity control and cardioid design – which means very little excitation behind the loudspeaker – has made an enormous difference to the sound quality in the Salles du Carrousel.”

Working closely with d&b, Magnum selected clusters of three CCL12s as the base configuration mounted on specially designed trusses that match the curvature of the ceiling. The same trusses also house the lighting equipment. The larger rooms benefit from seven clusters each, arranged in three rows of two down the length of the room, plus a central cluster. The smaller space has four clusters in two rows. All are powered by d&b D40 amplifiers.

“We preferred to have small clusters of just three boxes each to cover short distances as it makes the system much more modular and flexible and is much less visually imposing than larger arrays,” revealed Dubus. “The laser-precise directivity and the almost complete lack of backspill thanks to the cardioid design make this possible. We can really place the sound exactly where we want it and reflections have been significantly reduced.”