FOOTHILL RANCH, CA – (December 2008) – Top Czech Republic football team SK Slavia Praha has scored another success after winning its first 1 Liga title in 17 years, installing Europe’s first Renkus-Heinz RHAON-empowered audio system for its brand new Stadion Eden. The system delivers single-cable digitally networked operation throughout the stadium.

After a saga stretching back to the team’s birth in Prague in 1892, the new 21,000 seat Stadion Eden opened in the Vršovice district of Prague this spring, with an innovative roof suspension that allows an unobstructed view from every seat.

Lucie Antonsonova of the company’s Czech distributor, Audiopro, observes: “Sound distribution in sport stadiums is usually a big issue – there are only few which can be proud of their solution. It’s often a lastminute solution because the budget has already been spent. SK Slavia Praha wanted their new stadium to set a new standard.”

Stadion Eden is the first major sports facility in Europe equipped with RHAON (Renkus-Heinz Audio Operations Network), which delivers audio control and networking via a MediaMatrix Nion distribution hub, over a single Cat 5 cable to all 64 loudspeaker locations under the stadium’s roof. System integrators Soning, working in cooperation with Audiopro, created a system design to provide high quality, localised sound distribution to all 21,000 seats.

The physical constraints amounted to apartially roofed stadium where the football pitch is five meters below the surrounding terrain, creating a crucible of intense noise in the reverberant seating areas during matches. After 3D modeling of the stadium, Soning specified 64 distributed short-throw loudspeaker clusters. Each cluster has a pair of CF151-5R full-range two-way self-powered loudspeakers, each with a built-in RHAON-equipped PF1-500 Class D 500W digital amplifier.

Each cluster receives loudspeaker-specific audio and control signals over CobraNet via a single Cat 5 Ethernet cable from the system’s digital hub, a Peavey MediaMatrix Nion distribution processor, giving the customer the benefits of simplified installation and operational manageability, as well as lighter cabling. The CF151 itself met the requirements for compactness for roof mounting, and provides full-range performance enhanced by Renkus-Heinz’s Complex Conic horn design for constant beamwidth and directivity.

DSP integral to each loudspeaker, controlled from a Windows-based RHAON GUI, provides system tuning and overall protection and stability for up to 64 channels of 24-bit 48kHz digital audio plus real time monitoring and control functions.

System verification and performance optimisation can all be performed from a single computer at a single location. Karl-Gustaf Kahlau, Renkus-Heinz Export Sales Manager, comments: “This installation is proof that loudspeakers can be treated in integration terms as IP addresses in a network, and that this installation could pass as any computer network installation. “Not only is a minimum of hardware used in this installation, this is one of the most cost-effective stadium systems out there, yet still exceeds all the required international standards. The well thought-through system design makes not just announcements but a live music experience really enjoyable. After finetuning by Robert Nilsson of Swedish design and installation company DAT AB, we could listen to well recorded jazz/soul without getting annoying reflections hitting us from everywhere – and that was in an empty stadium, the worst possible situation.” During Nilsson’s system commissioning he measured achieved STI (intelligibility) values of a very respectable 0.61 – an exceptional performance for a venue of this proportion and size.