A purpose-built indoor venue for world figure skating and short track speed skating events in 2018, the Gangneung Ice Arena is located in the city of Gangneung on the east coast of South Korea.

Designed to become a permanent legacy facility for local recreational use, the arena has a seating capacity of 12,000 and houses two 60m x 30m ice rinks, for competition and training respectively. With four floors above ground and two below, the arena also uses an environmentally friendly ice cooling system.

The sound system for the Gangneung Ice Arena was designed and supplied by Inter-M Corporation, assisted by Desco on the installation. The Inter-M design was accurately calculated for the required intelligibility, sound levels and coverage and was based around Community R Series loudspeakers.

For the main competition rink, Inter-M used 40 R2-694Z high power, full-range, three-way loudspeakers to achieve the required sound levels and coverage. These are supplemented by four R2SubDF subwoofers, which add low frequency extension and impact for wide bandwidth, high quality music. The system serves a Midas Pro2/IP mixing console, with Symetrix Edge DSP. Lab.gruppen C 28:4 amplifiers power the Community loudspeakers.

The training rink uses a less powerful but similar system, to give skaters consistency of audio quality for training and competition.  In the training rink, Desco used 14 R.25-94Z and eight R.5-94Z. The training system also uses a Midas Pro2/IP console, Symetrix Edge DSP and Lab.gruppen C 28:4 amplifiers.

Inter-M’s selection of loudspeakers for this world-class venue was based on the need for high -quality speech and music, power and accurate coverage. Additionally, while the Gangneung Ice Arena is an indoor venue, ice rinks present challenging climatic conditions and this additionally made the all-weather R Series their preferred choice.