Norway - The Norsk Film Institute (NFI) in Oslo is the axle upon which the Norwegian film industry revolves. And with over 2000 screenings a year in its Oslo premises, roughly half of which are previews of major international releases for press and cinema owners, having quality vision and sound facilities are a fundamental requirement. It is with this in mind that the NFI has recently installed the first of Alcons' new Cinema Ribbon Monitor Systems (CRMS).
The NFI's Lillebil Room (named after the famous Norwegian actress Lillebil Ibsen) is a 68 capacity screening facility, where a constant series of daytime previews and evening showings keeps its equipment and staff busy.
"The sound has to be fantastic because of the status of the NFI," says the facility's Jan Olsen. "I had been aware of the Alcons pro-ribbon technology for some time and was eager to try something unconventional in the Lillebil Room.
"We always want to improve our equipment, and I was looking for a system that could easily handle current and future challenges of film sound, such as uncompressed sound from digital cinema packages."
After feedback from consultant Torkell Saetervadet, Olsen chose a CRMS configuration of three front channels and 12 surround cabinets, powered and controlled by Alcons ALC power amps, with Sony DFP3000 for analogue sound and SDDS playback, a Dolby DA20 processor for SRDigital and a Yamaha DME64 as central digital processor.
"I especially like the system's clarity, it's a very open sound. Speech intelligibility is extremely good and the bass response from the front channels is so much tighter that our previous system," says Olsen.
"Since we are using the CRMS mid-high systems on the surround channels, the smoothness between the front channels and surround is fantastic. I actually forget how good it sounds between seeing films in there. It's always a pleasure to watch them in that auditorium."
