Q2 Stadium

More than 50 Powersoft amplifiers are powering a high-impact audio set-up at Q2 Stadium, the new home of the first professional sports team in Austin, Texas, USA.

The $260 million venue, completed last year, is the home stadium of Austin FC, an association football team competing in Major League Soccer (MLS)’s Western Conference division. Designed to accommodate 20,500 fans on match day, the sport-first stadium is also ideally suited to other applications, including entertainment, leisure and outdoor activities.
To enhance the event experience at Q2 Stadium, architect Gensler designed for Austin FC a large, acoustically resonant roof canopy – the second biggest in the MLS – which, in addition to keeping fans cool and dry, amplifies the excitement and roar of the match-day or concert crowd.

At Q2 Stadium, 13 Ottocanali 12K4 DSP+D and six Ottocanali 4K4 DSP+D drive the main loudspeakers, which are hung from the main roof structure, with leftover channels feeding audio in the concourse areas. The Ottocanali platforms delivered the right amount of power for the speakers, and the eight-channel/2 RU density with Dante and built-in support for speaker voicings made them the right fit.

Four X8 and two X4 amplifiers, from the workhorse X Series, power the stadium subwoofers, while Idibri’s Luke Krogness CTS-D, used 27 compact Mezzo AD amplifiers distributed and strategically hidden throughout the facility to power the premium spaces.

To enhance the event experience at Q2 Stadium, architect Gensler designed for Austin FC a large, acoustically resonant roof canopy – the second biggest in the MLS – which, in addition to keeping fans cool and dry, amplifies the excitement and roar of the match-day or concert crowd.

In order to deliver an audio experience befitting of this world-class venue, Idibri’s Ben Boeshans CTS-D designed Q2 Stadium’s sound system around Powersoft’s Mezzo, Ottocanali and X Series amplifiers.

Boeshans, the designer of the audio system for the main stadium ‘bowl’, says the Powersoft amps were chosen to drive a distributed system that is carefully designed to meet the client brief for “clear and impactful audio”.

The Mezzo AD amplifiers matrixed facility-wide Dante sources and local analogue inputs so users could select their preferred audio source in each space. The associated reduction in audio cabling to/from each space “was an efficient cost-savings approach to provide discrete stereo amplification in each room for personalised experiences for every user,”

Designed to accommodate 20,500 fans on match day, the sport-first stadium is also ideally suited to other applications, including entertainment, leisure and outdoor activities.
Q2 Stadium is a celebration of soccer, food, drink and connecting with friends. “With the overall design for Q2 Stadium, it was important to ensure that when it comes to audio, everyone – whether they’re attending a game or a live show – has the best seat in the house.