Set to be hosted across a dozen stadia up to 1,800 miles apart, from Russia’s Baltic Coast to the Ural mountains in the east, the 64 matches that comprise the 2018 World Cup are about to get underway. Among the venues is the Ekaterinburg Stadium, with four matches scheduled at the home of Russian Premier League side Ural Ekaterinburg. In preparation, a huge Outline sound system has been installed, based around the new Stadia product line – designed specifically for this application.
Opened in 1957 and then subject to a major redevelopment completed in 2011, the Ekaterinburg Stadium now meets FIFA’s specifications and features innovative temporary space for fans, with extra covered seating on the outside of the stadium perimeter behind both goals, taking its capacity up to just over 35,000.
Its sound system comprises 223 Outline loudspeaker enclosures for seamless coverage and intelligibility at every seat in the house. The Stadia series includes three models (the 100-10, 100-20 and 100-30, offering a choice of vertical dispersion characteristics) and all three models feature in a design that uses 121 Stadia modules throughout the stadium.
They are joined by 48 Outline ST Sub low-frequency modules, the dedicated LF companion in the Stadia range, while a further 54 Vegas 24 ultra-compact enclosures are used to cover the VIP and guest zones. More than 300 individual channels of Outline amplification deliver a combined total power in excess of 1m Watts.
Croc Ltd was the general contractor for the development of the stadium infrastructure, creating and implementing a complete suite of facilities including low-current designs, ticket entry and physical security systems, telecommunications, broadcast, multimedia, sound reinforcement and engineering systems monitoring. At the invitation of Andrey Korogodin, Director of Corporate Customers Department at Croc, the Sofit Light Company (Outline’s distributor in the Russian Federation) handled the design of the sound reinforcement system.
‘We received a very positive feedback on the job done,’ reports Sofit Light Senior Engineer, Alexander Klinushkin. ‘When the system was turned on for the first time, using only the factory presets, the result was already intelligible and musical. We made some fine tuning (that was in any case foreseen during the system design), the system works with a lot of headroom and it is necessary to keep it in mind when working with the audience.’
Also a key venue in the tournament, the Kazan Arena will be using their Outline system which was installed in 2013. A combination of Outline Spectra II and Tripla II (using 24 and 48 units respectively) are powered by 31 Outline T Nine amplifiers, all connected to five Outline Genius M412 matrices.
