More than 60 Powersoft Quattrocanali 4804 amplifiers are delivering the power for an all-new PA system serving one of the biggest stadia in West Africa.
Located in the eponymous suburb of Abidjan, the largest city in the Ivory Coast, the Olympic Stadium of Ebimpé is the country’s national stadium, being home to Les Éléphants, the Ivory Coast national football team. The 60,000-seat venue was inaugurated on 3 October 2020, when it was given the additional name Alassane Ouattara Olympic Stadium (Stade Olympique Alassane Ouattara), after the Ivorian president. It is expected to eventually form the heart of a vast, 287-hectare Olympic village, and will next year host the opening ceremony and final match of the postponed 2023 Africa Cup of Nations tournament.
Inza Bamba from Protech Distribution
The need for a new sound system so soon after the Olympic Stadium’s construction came after its original PA system – installed by the original contractor, China’s Beijing Construction Engineering Group (BCEG) – was damaged by adverse weather conditions. The new system was designed by Ricardo Castro, CEO of Portuguese AV consultancy RCOe, on behalf of local integrator Protech Distribution.
In addition to the 61 Quattrocanali 4804 – of which he opted for the DSP+D model, with Dante audio-over-IP networking – Castro specified 14 Powersoft Duecanali 6404 DSP+D amplifiers to lend additional power for the 104-loudspeaker system, which is divided into 28 clusters to maximise audio coverage across the stadium. A pair of Quattrocanali are bi-amped to each Community R2-66MAX speaker cluster, while the Duecanali are used to power the Community IS8-215 subs.
Ricardo Castro of RCOe
All amplifiers, patchboxes and network switches are divided into four rack rooms, located at the four corners of the stadium, to minimise the length of the cable connection to the loudspeakers. A Biamp TesiraFORTÉ DAN DSP is used as a Dante converter for the primary audio source to the amplifiers, as well as for a four-zone paging system for security and emergency announcements.
Castro explains that while he is generally manufacturer-agnostic, he knew when first approached by Inza Bamba, Protech’s managing director, with whom he has a long working relationship, that Powersoft amplifiers and Community loudspeakers from Biamp would be a perfect fit for the new-look Ebimpé Stadium – and that’s before he found that BCEG had used some Powersoft racks for the otherwise poorly designed previous installation. This discovery was important from a budgetary point of view: having already paid out for one sound system, the stadium’s managing committee was looking for a cost-effective solution for its replacement.