Estadio Unico Madre de Ciudades ran into a challenge during its 2020 AV integration due to Covid-19 restrictions. Luckily, the AV integration firm working on the stadium, Equaphon Sistemas de Sonido SRL, found a unique way to integrate the stadium’s audio system while still adhering to all health and safety restrictions in place due to COVID-19 – all thanks to the trust they put in Audinate’s Dante audio network platform.
With Equaphon needing to reduce the number of staff it had on-site during the integration process they discovered that Dante would enable a modified number of staff to be on-site without compromising the quality of work or the timeline.
“We quickly realised that with Dante we could work on all the routing, programming and testing from our headquarters, which is located 600 miles away,” said Alberto Escriña, member of the Equaphon Engineering Department. “We sent a small team to the site for just a few days of installation, adjustment and measurement and we did most everything else remotely. When we finished, the system sounded incredible.”
The Equaphon staff at the company’s headquarters in Buenos Aires used remote desktop-sharing software to access Dante Controller software running on-site at the stadium. Dante Controller provides essential device status information and powerful real-time network monitoring – including device-level latency and clock stability stats, multicast bandwidth usage, and customised event logging.
The Equaphon team was able to use Dante Controller to easily backup, restore, move, and reuse Dante network configurations through presets. The ability to edit Dante routing configurations – both online and offline – was also beneficial. This process allowed for an efficient and effective remote setup, resulting in less time on the road for the Equaphon team.
“Our team only had to be on-site for a few days for the physical installation,” Alberto said. “That further reduced the cost of the project as it lowered travel and lodging expenses.”
The flexibility of Audinate’s Dante enabled a new integration paradigm for installation teams – one that reduces the number of staff required to be sent on the road for a project. This reduces the travel, lodging, food, and hours billed on a project. The result? More expansive systems being installed into more locations.
Further, because Dante is used in more than 3,000 different products from more than 350 different manufacturers, the approach can be utilised by nearly any integrator – as long as they are working with one of the many manufacturers that integrate Dante into their solutions.
In the example of Estadio Unico Madre de Ciudades,19 Powersoft Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+D amplifiers and two Powersoft Mezzo 322 AD amplifiers – all of which use Dante networking – are installed. The main matrix is a Xilica Solaro FR1 digital signal processor with Dante connectivity. Two Xilica Solaro XIO-8 I/O expansion frames are used where analog audio signals may need to be added into the Dante system. Eight STS Linea V15i loudspeaker arrays are mounted around the stadium, providing audio coverage of the stands. The V15i speakers use Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+D units for amplification and to connect to the Dante network.
With near-zero latency and perfect synchronisation, Dante offers the stadium uncompressed, multi-channel digital audio channels. While the stadium uses a local fiber network, Dante can be routed over all standard 1 gig Ethernet networks.
Most importantly is the result: excellent audio performance that is completed on time and at the quoted cost.
“The system sounds amazing and the client is very happy,” said Francisco Maiocchi, member of the Equaphon Engineering Department. “Without Dante we would have had a lot of challenges here. Instead, we used Dante, and we were able to get an amazing system working very easily.”
