After many years of success, the football club Zulte Waregem decided to make building their new stadium a top priority, providing seating for over 14.000 spectators, it was of great importance to build a modern football stadium with an emphasis on relaxation and comfort. Upon the completion of the renewed stadium it will be to a modern complex housing 14.000 seats, more than 52 kiosks, 1.800 business seats and 27 sky boxes in 4 stages. There will also be space for banquet halls, offices, shops and a business restaurant of 600m². The completion of the overall project is scheduled for 2017. At the end of last season, the first phase of construction of the new stadium started. For the audio system, playing a vital key in safety and the perception of the matches, an appeal was made to the expertise of PVL, located in Oostkamp, Belgium. Thanks to their close collaboration with audio brand AUDAC, detailed simulations showed the potential of this system in advance. One of the challenges of this project was that the new stadium would be built on the location of the club’s current facilities. Because the stadium is being built in phases, the current audio system needs to work simultaneously with the brand new system. Inside the stadium another 230 pieces of WX802/OB are provided for a dispersed and even sound distribution over the 52 kiosks, 352 toilets, all of its lounge/press areas and hall ways. To power all this sound, they chose 26 pieces of the SMQ500 and 38 pieces of the SMQ750 digital power amplifiers using WavedynamicsTM. For all 100V lines, CAP multi-channel digital amplifiers are used. As the “brains” of the installation, the M2 web based audio matrix proved to be the best solution. In total 7 M2’s are linked via optic fiber together with APM116 digital paging microphones,CMT500 microphones for ambient sound and DW5066 digital wall panels connected to the system via cat6 cabling. Using pre-sets stored within each M2 the Audio input and volumes will change automatically leading upto the football match and revert back to their pre-match settings after the event is played.
