Argentina. The Estadio Único Madre de Ciudades is the largest stadium in the province of Santiago del Estero with a capacity of 29,000 people. Completed in October 2020, the stadium will host matches of the next editions of the Copa America and the Supercopa Argentina.
To meet the project deadline, the AV integration company that worked on the stadium, Equaphon Sistemas de Sonido SRL, found a unique way to integrate the stadium's audio system while still complying with all health and safety restrictions in place due to COVID-19, all thanks to the trust they place in Audinate's Dante audio network platform.
Better workflows, efficient configuration
Dante is the de facto standard for digital audio networks and distributes hundreds of channels of uncompressed multi-channel digital audio over standard Ethernet networks with near-zero latency and perfect synchronization. Dante allows audio, control, and all other data to coexist effectively on the same network.
"Dante saves costs and ensures that the stadium can expand and scale the system as needed," said Francisco Maiocchi, a member of Equaphon's Engineering Department. "Dante also offers great audio management and control benefits. Dante was always part of our integration plan."
What was not 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 found that Dante would allow a modified number of staff to be on site without compromising the quality of work or schedule.
"We quickly realized that with Dante we could work on all routing, scheduling and testing from our headquarters, which is 600 miles away," said Alberto Escriña, a member of Equaphon's Engineering Department. "We sent a small team to the site for a few days of installation, adjustment and measurement and did almost everything else remotely. When we finished, the system sounded incredible."
More efficient operations
Equaphon staff at the company's Headquarters in Buenos Aires used remote desktop sharing software to access the Dante Controller software running in the stadium. Dante Controller provides essential information about the devices within the stadium and powerful real-time network monitoring, including clock stability and latency statistics at the device level, multicast bandwidth usage, and custom event logging.
The Equaphon team was able to use Dante Controller to easily back up, restore, move, and reuse Dante network configurations through presets. The ability to edit Dante routing settings, both online and offline, was also beneficial. This process allowed for 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," Alberto Escriña said. "That further reduced the cost of the project as it reduced travel and accommodation expenses."
Workflow backed by Dante
The project features a strong Dante network throughout the stadium's audio workflow, all running on a local fiber optic network. The installation includes 19 Powersoft Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+D amplifiers and two Powersoft Mezzo 322 AD amplifiers, all of which use Dante networks. The main array 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 to the Dante system.
Eight STS Linea V15i speaker arrays are mounted around the stadium, providing audio coverage of the stands. V15i speakers use Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+D units for amplification and to connect to the Dante network.
"The system sounds amazing and the customer is very happy," said Francisco Maiocchi. "Without Dante we would have had a lot of challenges here. Instead, we used Dante and were able to make an amazing system work very easily."
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