For over four decades, Canberra’s AIS Arena has been a fundamental part of Australia’s sports and entertainment landscape. Built in 1981 as part of a government initiative founding the Australian Institute of Sport, the Arena is a multi-purpose indoor facility and was originally known as the ‘National Indoor Sports Centre’. Often referred to as ‘the strategic heart of high performance sport in Australia,’ AIS Arena takes pride of place within the institute’s 66-hectare headquarters.
With a total capacity of 6,000, the AIS Arena hosts a myriad of sport, entertainment and community events each year. Following extensive renovations in 2023, the venue recently re-opened its doors to the public, equipped with enhanced facilities and modernized features.
Among the upgrades were new LED screens, digital signage, scoreboards, and PA system, which were installed by Audio Visual Integration specialists Diversified. Solutions from NEXO’s P+ Series were chosen for the system, including 40 x P12 loudspeakers and 12 x L18 subwoofers. Powered by 9 x NEXO NXAMPMk2 TD Controllers for amplification and processing, the system is highly capable, excelling in both the speech reinforcement and dynamic music playback requirements of the venue.
Ben Wynn, Operations Manager (ACT) at Diversified, explains why the P+ Series was well-suited as the Arena’s primary sound system:
“The audio-visual component is essential in an arena like this- ensuring athletes, operators, and visitors receive perfect coverage and an unforgettable experience for all parties involved. The audio system within the venue needed to achieve a high level of speech intelligibility, along with high SPLs in all areas. This equates to a clear and crisp sound in all areas of the arena. Diversified chose NEXO because we knew we could get these results. The P+ Series was perfect for this system.”
As is common with projects of this scope, tailored adjustments were essential in maximising the system’s efficiency. This process included precise installation and verification against all necessary performance standards, including specialised mounting solutions, as Ben describes:
“Diversified worked closely with Group Technologies to design and engineer custom brackets to deploy the P+ Series across the Arena roof. The NEXO system’s compact design, ease of rigging, and weight made deployment of the system exceptionally easy.”
“A venue of this nature, ultimately, is a large concrete box [and this] presents inherent acoustic challenges,” explains Jared Gill from WSP, who were pivotal AV consultants on the project. “In order to deal with such challenges, we worked with Group Technologies to undertake acoustic modelling, to ultimately ensure that the performance of the loudspeaker solution was to the standard required of such a venue. This enabled Diversified, in deploying the system, to get the optimal performance out of the solution.”
Roy Cressey, Director of ElectroAcoustic, worked alongside the Diversified team during the commissioning period to ensure that the NEXO system was calibrated for optimal results. The French-engineered loudspeakers have historically been a trusted solution for venues in line with the scale and demands of the AIS Arena, frequently chosen for their compelling balance of physical footprint, weight, and crucially, their pristine sonic performance, as Roy notes:
“The results were impressive- the distributed NEXO P12 system gave effective coverage to all the audience areas, and the voicing of the P12 was very well-suited to this application. The L18 subwoofers provided the required bandwidth for the dynamic musical requirements.”
With the Arena now once again open to events, Michael Singh, AIS Arena Project Manager at the Australian Sports Commission, sums up the results achieved by the venue upgrade initiative: “We’re really pleased with the outcomes that we’ve received from the refurbishment program, part of [which] was to enhance our lighting and our audio-visual capabilities- which overall enhances the customer experience. The sound system that has been installed as part of the arena project is significantly more advanced to what was here previously. The feedback that we’ve received from athletes and entertainers that have used the space has been very complimentary of the lighting and visual enhancements that have been installed into the arena.”
“The arena has only been in operation for a few months, and we’ve already received positive feedback [regarding] ease of operation, audio coverage and user experience,” notes Ben. “Here at the AIS Arena, the future looks bright. It was a great project to work on and all parties brought their A-game.”
