Poland's National Rugby Stadium Projects with D.A.S. Audio Gdynia Municipal Football stadium is the home to Poland's Arka Gdynia football club. With a seating capacity of roughly 15,139 spectators, the new facility recently received a large, networked audio-driven sound reinforcement system. To ensure even coverage across the stadium's multiple zones, loudspeakers from the catalog of Valencia, Spain-based D.A.S. Audio were placed into service. Sopot, Poland-based Mega Music's audio-visual installation division was contracted to handle the Gdynia Municipal Football stadium's new sound system. Mega Music's Piotr Nowinski managed the project and discussed the challenges of the job, which involved the deployment of D.A.S. Audio's DR-12 two-way full-range loudspeakers, the BiDriver Plus, which is a two-way, mid-high unit designed for long throw applications, and the company's CL-6T ceiling speakers. "The D.A.S. DR-12s were our loudspeakers of choice to cover the audience seating areas on this project," explained Nowinski, "as they provide perfect speech intelligibility. Further, the uniform dispersion characteristics of DR-12s enabled us to provide even coverage of the audience seating areas with a minimum number of boxes. The high sensitivity and flat frequency response of the loudspeakers enabled us to achieve a high SPL level with no compromise to sound quality. For the field, the BiDrivers Plus proved to be the right tool, the company says, as they provide extreme throw distance while maintaining high sound quality." The stadium's grandstand areas were divided into 44 zones and for these areas, a total of 84 D.A.S. DR-12 enclosures were placed into service. With its rugged Polypropylene enclosure, the DR-12's used for this project were custom built by D.A.S. to the IP54 rating for outdoor use. The football field was divided into four zones and, to cover this area, eight D.A.S. Audio BiDriver Plus loudspeaker systems were placed into service. The Bi-Driver Plus incorporates a co-axial speaker built into a special horn unit and is particularly well suited to applications where a high level of speech intelligibility is required. "With its long throw characteristics, this was the perfect choice for the field areas," noted Nowinski." Coverage for the stadium's corridors and select outside areas were addressed by forming another 30 zones. For these areas, D.A.S. Audio CL-6T ceiling speakers were deployed. Equipped with a multi-tap line transformer for distributed audio systems, the CL-6T is a two-way passive full range ceiling loudspeaker incorporating a 6.5" cone low frequency transducer and a ferrofluid cooled 1" soft dome high frequency unit with integral diffraction ring. "The distributed main audio system that we designed for this project is managed by a Symetrix SymNet DSP processor, networked together via a four-node CobraNet setup," said Nowinski. "The main system is fed by Ashly NE8250PE multichannel, networked amplifiers. Both the SymNet and Ashly amps are controlled via a PC application. Audio mixing is handled via a Crest Audio XR20 analog mixing desk located in the control room. The corridor areas are run by a Bosch Presidio network controller and Bosch PRS amplifiers." With the new sound system in service, Nowinski reports that stadium management, the players, and the fans are all noticing a dramatic improvement in the sound quality. "We are getting perfect, uniform sound coverage throughout the audience stands and across the field," Nowinski notes. "The sound pressure level (SPL-A) ranges between 111 - 113dB, with no significant drops to be found anywhere. Equally important, the sound quality is excellent. We're experiencing very good frequency range and, remember, there were no subwoofers used on this project. The folks at D.A.S. Audio were a tremendous help with this project -- providing quality support in timely fashion -- and, together, I believe we've created a really impressive system that will serve the area's football fans for years to come." 
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