Kharkiv sits in the east of Ukraine, close to the border with Russia. The second largest city in the country is home to the Metalist Stadium, which has been nicknamed ‘spider’ because of the 24 roof supports that arch like spider’s legs from the bowl to the ground outside. The new architectural appearance is the result of an upgrade to the Kharkiv Arena, which was designed to not only make the venue viable for Euro 2012, but to create a modern, multi-functional sports complex and entertainment facility. Three of the group “B” matches took place at the stadium as a result of this huge upgrade: Netherlands-Germany (1-2), Netherlands-Denmark(0-1) and Netherlands-Portugal(2-1). Clearly not a lucky venue for the Dutch!
The modernisation has touched all parts of the complex: the south grandstand was added, the eastern one was rebuilt, and the northern and western – were reconstructed. In turn, the employees saved the facility’s objects that are monuments of architecture. The arena itself can hold 38,633 seated spectators.
Kompeks-V, which represents MC² and Bose in the Ukraine, took charge of the audio infrastructure at the stadium. Using Bose’s Modeler software, the company created a 3D model of the sports venue. That model was then used to pinpoint optimal speaker points. Using a computer-based 3D model of the acoustic space and advanced acoustic ray tracing algorithms, Modeler can be used to predict a sound system’s performance. It uses full STI prediction – a measure of speech transmission quality.
The software takes into account the acoustic characteristics of building materials that were used during construction, and automatically takes into account the sound absorption coefficient. Other parameters, such as background noise are also fed into the model. Based on the calculations, a system of distributed clusters was decided on. These clusters come in five different formations and are used in differing volumes. The first cluster, which consists of three Bose LT MB24 subwoofers, has been used 22 times around the stadium, evenly spaced under the roof.
Amplification for the system comes from a combination of Bittner and MC² units. The subwoofers are powered by 35 MC² Ti-3500 amplifiers and the other speakers by 30 Bittner XR2500 amplifiers. All of the amps and audio processing is taken care of by Bose Control Space ESP-88 processors that are situated in rooms located on the north, south, east and west stands. All of the audio signals are passed through a fibre optic CobraNet network.
Richard Fleming, Sales and Applications Support Manager for MC² commented on the install: “This is a huge upgrade for the stadium, turning it into a multi-purpose arena suitable for a much greater array of sporting events, and we are pleased to have a part of the new installation. We always work closely with Bose for systems of this type and it’s great to see the Ti amplifiers’ remote status montioring for not just temperature, but load conditions being used so effectively.”
Thanks to mondodr.com for their kind permission to edit and publish this article.
