RCF Reinforces Denmark's Parken Stadium

Parken Stadium is Denmark's national football stadium and the current home of FC Copenhagen. Built between 1990-1992 it currently has a capacity of 38,065 (for football matches) although for other events the stadium can hold as many as 50,000 people with an end-stage set-up and 55,000 with a centre-stage set-up.

In 2006-07 the club qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time in its history, and three years later became the first Danish club to ever reach the knockout stage of the Champions League.

Keeping pace with the club's recent success, the Parken Stadium is equipped with a state-of-the-art infrastructure, with a recently upgraded audio system. The Danish company Nordic Sales (part of the Matrix Group) delivered and installed a premium RCF loudspeaker system, working in close collaboration with the RCF project department, who specified the individual products, documentation, acoustic simulation, measurements, and more.

"The new RCF speaker system at the Parken Stadium provides a perfect solution, and we have already received positive feedback from many people who say how impressed they are with the 'new' sound," says Lars Bo Baadsgaard of Nordic Sales. "This is due to the close collaboration with RCF and their project team. With their knowledge of stadium installations, and particularly their recent experience with the new Juventus Stadium, we knew we could rely on their guidance when it came to designing the optimum speaker solution for the Parken Stadium."

To cover the site, Nordic Sales specified 42 RCF Acustica H1315 WP, along with 18 RCF P4228 and 12 RCF H6045 fiberglass long-throw horns.

Each cluster contains three of the H1315 WP, a three-way full range loudspeaker system that incorporates a 15" LF transducer, a 10" cone MF transducer and a 1.4" exit titanium compression driver. It is especially designed to withstand exposure to weather without damage or loss of function to the speakers.

In addition, the RCF P4228 speakers have been installed to cover selected areas of the tribunes. This weatherproof, full range, wide-dispersion, two-way loudspeaker system offers substantial power and efficiency for a variety of professional indoor or outdoor applications. The HF section is a constant directivity CMD horn loaded with a 1.4" RCF Precision Neodymium compression driver with a 2.5" diaphragm assembly for smooth, wide dispersion. The low-frequency transducer is a double 8" woofer with a 2.5" voice coil.

Finally, the RCF H6045 fiberglass horns are equally designed to withstand all weathers and offer high sound reproduction quality and sound pressure levels. These horns are used as a separate evacuation set-up, which can be automatically activated if special alert messages are required, or as a safety back up for the bigger H1315 WP system.

The total speaker set-up is controlled by a specially-designed system, where each section of the tribune (or groups of speakers) can be individually controlled, with its routing quickly reconfigured, and status of the separate audio lines monitored.

Another unique feature is that in the event of power failure the system can run in battery mode, so that alerts can still be flagged in the event of an evacuation procedure being required.

Besides being the home base for FC Copenhagen and the national soccer team, Parken Stadium is also used for hosting big events and concerts etc. In fact the new audio system has already proved its worth at several such events.