Opened in 1990 to host hockey, Milan’s iconic Forum is a 15,800-capacity arena which has, over the years, hosted the largest and most prestigious international sporting events including the World Championships of Volleyball, Hockey, Boxing, Figure Skating and Rhythmic Gymnastics. It is also the home of Olimpia Milano, hosting the Championship and Euroleague. Considered the temple of music in Italy, it is an obligatory stop for the tours of the greatest artists in the world.
When the need to replace the existing audio system in order to improve the user experience arose, the arena operators turned to Vigolzone based value-added NEXO distributor Ligra DS to propose a new system that would also make significant improvements in performance, particularly in the areas of speech intelligibility and uniformity of audience coverage.
“The structural conditions of the arena and the needs of the event setups were such that line arrays were not appropriate for this project” comments Ligra Pro AV Sales and Marketing Manager Mauro Spagnoli. “We know that the NEXO P15 is an amazingly powerful point-source speaker and, in collaboration with the NEXO Engineering Support team and Francesco Pino, our Audio Engineer, we were able to design a system using 19 individual P15s each in 2 rings to cover the upper and lower seating tiers of the arena.”
NEXO NXAMPMk2 combined amplification and processing solutions integrated seamlessly into an existing Dante network with Yamaha hardware and switches.
Installation at the arena was handled by Ligra DS’s ‘Certified NEXO Business Partner’ Jobbing Soc. Coop. AV Chief Technology Officer Luigi Esposito takes up the story. “The arena was in use almost daily, so we had to work around the various events. A total of 1.8km of cabling was installed in early December 2023, then the speakers went up in early January. Mounting hardware and angles were set on the ground before raising the speakers up to a height of almost 20m”
Commenting on behalf of the Forum, the CTO, Eng. Paolo Malagamba says: “We are happy to have completed this important project to renew the audio system. The main goal we have achieved was to improve the intelligibility of speech during events through an audio system that integrates perfectly into the structure and impacts as little as possible with the increasingly important setups of the events hosted. We are sure that the general improvement in the quality of the audio obtained will guarantee our spectators an even more spectacular and satisfying enjoyment of the event.”
For further information on Ligra DS, visit www.ligra.it
