Estadio Unico Madre de Ciudades, a new stadium in the province of Santiago del Estero, Argentina with a capacity of 29,000, has been equipped with a sophisticated audio system integrated with an Audinate Dante networking backbone.
Completed in October 2020, the stadium will host matches for upcoming editions of the Copa America and the Supercopa Argentina. To meet the project’s deadline, AV integration firm Equaphon Sistemas de Sonido found a unique way to integrate the stadium’s audio system in utilizing Dante while still adhering to all health and safety restrictions in place due to COVID-19.
“Dante saves on costs and ensures the stadium can expand and scale the system as needed,” states Francisco Maiocchi, a member of the Equaphon Engineering Department. “Dante also offers many great audio control and management benefits. Dante was always part of our integration plan.”
What wasn’t part of the plan was the global pandemic. Equaphon management was faced with reducing the number of staff it had on-site during the integration process due to social distancing requirements. They discovered that Dante would enable a modified number of staff to be on-site without compromising the quality of work or timeline.
“We quickly realized that with Dante we could work on all the routing, programming and testing from our headquarters, which is located 600 miles away,” says Alberto Escriña, another member of the engineering department. “We sent a small team to the site for just a few days of installation, adjustment and measurement and we did most everything else remotely. When we finished, the system sounded incredible.”
The Equaphon staff at the company’s headquarters in Buenos Aires used remote desktop-sharing software to access Dante Controller software running on-site at the stadium. Dante Controller provides device status information and real-time network monitoring – including device-level latency and clock stability stats, multicast bandwidth usage, and customized event logging.
The Equaphon team was able to use Dante Controller to backup, restore, move, and reuse Dante network configurations through presets. The ability to edit Dante routing configurations – both online and offline – was also beneficial. This process allowed for an efficient and effective remote setup, resulting in less time on the road for the Equaphon team.
“Our team only had to be on-site for a few days for the physical installation,” Escriña says. “That further reduced the cost of the project as it lowered travel and lodging expenses.”
The Dante network works throughout the stadium’s audio workflow, all running on a local fiber-optic network. Included in the installation are 19 Powersoft Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+D amplifiers and two Powersoft Mezzo 322 AD amplifiers, all of which use Dante networking. The main matrix is a Xilica Solaro FR1 digital signal processor with Dante connectivity. Two Xilica Solaro XIO-8 I/O expansion frames are used where analog audio signals may need to be added.
Eight STS Linea V15i loudspeaker arrays are mounted around the stadium, providing audio coverage of the stands. The loudspeakers are driven by Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+D units for amplification and to connect to the Dante network.
“The system sounds amazing and the client is very happy,” Maiocchi concludes. “Without Dante we would have had a lot of challenges here. Instead, we used Dante, and we were able to get an amazing system working very easily.”
