Built for the Commonwealth Games in 1978 and seating 60,000, Commonwealth Stadium is Canada’s second largest outdoor sports venue. The venue hosts soccer, Edmonton Eskimos football and other sporting and entertainment events and, until recently, was served by an end-zone, scoreboard-mounted loudspeaker system that was typical of the 1970s. To minimise neighbourhood noise spill, this system features a central loudspeaker array housed in a unique metal pod. The pod was supported by four large aircraft cables and could be lowered to the ground for service.

This system served the stadium for several decades with voice-range audio. However, modern sports fans and associations expect full-range audio for music and clear announcements that can be heard above crowd noise. Thus Commonwealth called on Aquila Productions to design a new system for the stadium. Lead Consultant Vernon Mason of Aquila retained consultant Dale Fawcett of Orchestral Arts Consulting in Toronto to provide audio modelling and audio system design.

Unlike many modern stadia, Commonwealth has no support structure for distributed loudspeaker arrays and neighbourhood noise bleed remained a concern. Thus, Fawcett chose to retain the original central cluster design with a new central pod similar in size to the original and a loudspeaker system that would respect the weight limits of the support cables. He calculated that an array of Community R2 loudspeakers would meet these challenges while achieving the stadium’s goals for increased sound level and music quality.

Installed by Allstar Show Industries of Edmonton, Commonwealth’s new system uses 32 Community R2-52 loudspeakers arranged in four circles in the pod and aimed at the various seating areas of the stadium. Under-balcony seating is covered by 107 Community W Series W2-218 loudspeakers and other areas are covered by R.5, R.25 and CS4 loudspeakers. Fawcett added a digital mixer and a Q-Sys DSP system and used eight Community dSpec processors to manage and EQ the loudspeakers.

‘The Community R Series allowed me to meet the stadium’s goals for audio level and quality and still fit within the space and weight limits of the central pod,’ Fawcett  says. ‘The FIR filters in Community’s dSpec made tuning easy and we achieved very even coverage with little or no neighbourhood noise bleed.’