There is a significant potential in ensuring a high degree of interaction between room acoustic and electroacoustic design, especially for concert venues optimized for amplified music.

This paper will address key room acoustic criteria for venues for pop and rock music. Also, the interaction between the room acoustic and electroacoustic design through the different design phases will be discussed.

Examples will be given from the new concert venue at Rockheim, the Norwegian National Centre for Pop and Rock.

The paper will also address the following open issues: Optimum ways of handling early side wall reflections, desired liveliness at the stage and in the audience area, and the importance of supporting performer-audience interaction through acoustic coupling between stage and audience area.

Unfortunately, these topics has not been treated extensively in the literature. To the authors’ knowledge, there has only been published a few papers written by N.W. Adelmann-Larsen et.al. which treat acoustics for concert venues for pop and rock music in depth. Their main results are summarized in 1.