The Rugby World Cup kicked off on Friday at the Stade de France with host nation France recording an historic 27-13 win against the mighty New Zealand All Blacks.
Commentators reported an extraordinary atmosphere in the 80,000+-capacity French national stadium which has enjoyed a lifelong relationship with local audio equipment manufacturer NEXO, with nearly 300 of its high-output loudspeakers affixed to the stadium’s immense floating roof.
Replacing an existing NEXO Alpha system, a new 13-zone audio system was installed by French event production company Melpomen (now B-Live) in 2010/11, featuring nearly 300x NEXO GEO S12 loudspeaker cabinets and almost 30x RS18s, the first time NEXO delivered these powerful sub-bass units into a sports stadium install.
The GEO S12 design was customised especially for the Stade de France installation, resulting in the creation of the now-standard S12-ST cabinet, so successful in large-format sporting environments.
The design provides high levels of management: control of the directivity of the loudspeaker output, which keeps the sound within regulation limits and within the stadium itself, and control of the operation of the system, which allows any signal to be sent to any zone from pitch to carparks from a single control room.
The NEXO sound system is split to cover the upper and lower parts of the stadium. 40 clusters of NEXO cabinets are flown from the roof for the stands: 7x GEO S12-ST modules are directed at the upper levels, while a separate array of 6x S12s faces directly down towards the lower levels. Another 32 cabinets of S12 are used for fill at ground level. RS18s are flown, 27 in total.
Good wishes luck to all the teams in the 2023 Rugby World Cup – especially Les Bleus!
For more information, visit nexo-sa.com
For more information on the Rugby World Cup 2023, visit: https://www.rugbyworldcup.com/2023/
