The Stadium's new sound system is mainly used for speeches and sports-event entertainment segments including music, but occasionally the venue is used for larger events such as the Festival Interceltique de Lorient.
The installation design was carried out jointly by Audiolite and DV2. On the site, project supervisor Franck Fily, sound system designer Sylvain Turpin - who was also in charge of the system alignment, rigging expert Lionel Gillet and cable manufacturer Jord Mallejac placed three clusters of six Adamson Metrix Ws in the North bleachers and four clusters of six Adamson Metrix Ws in the Presidential bleachers.
With the system's permanent placement outdoors at a close proximity to the salty winds of the Altantic Ocean, many anticipatory steps were taken to guarantee the system's longevity. First, was waterproofing it against humidity using a special paint for the birch enclosure. It was then varnished inside out with a special varnish covering every inch of the wooden surface. The usual Speakon connectors were removed and replaced with strain reliefs-directly to the box. The speaker components were tropicalised, further water-proofing parts such as the already weather resilient Kevlar cones. All rigging hardware including frames and pins were galvanized. The grill was constructed from aluminum, instead of the usual steel.
"Due to difficult rigging point options, a vertical area of 90 degrees had to be covered with each cluster, making the Adamson Metrix W's 15 degree vertical coverage essential" comments DV2 technical director Didier DalFitto. Turpin adds: "We needed to find a system that would fix the problems with the old speaker system, which had bad coverage and frequency response, as well as insufficient SPL for this specific venue. The Adamson ND-8LM 16 Ohm drivers made us gain some savings due to less cabling and amplifying. We put six Metrix W LF & HF's on two channels of a Lab.gruppen C68:4."
(Jim Evans)
