AtlasIED IPX series clock speakers are installed in smaller spaces in the Girardin Sports Center.
Be it ice hockey in the winter or soccer in the summer, amateur sports are important to the city of Drummondville, Quebec. This explains why the city built the 73,000-square-foot Girardin Sports Center in 2021. At a cost of $21.7 million, the multi-sport facility has separate arenas to house a full indoor ice hockey rink (with fan seating) and indoor soccer field (with 250-meter suspended running track), plus conference rooms, locker rooms, and offices.
“Girardin is a very modern rink with a lot of comfort and rooms for players, but also for the audience, too,” said Daniel Bolduc, director of commercial audio visual installation at SONIMEC, the systems integrator/installer for this project. “It’s very family friendly. Parents can support their children from the bar or the restaurant while watching a soccer and hockey game. They can bring their computer and finish their work during a game.”
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Rather than settling for a substandard PA system, the Girardin Sports Center has a top-notch AtlasIED audio system throughout this facility, right down to its publicly accessible Bluetooth audio connections. "Music in the locker room for our guests creates special moments for them before and after the game,” said Jonathan Guay, director of Drummondville’s Recreation and Community Life Department. “Sport is all about passion and feelings, and music helps create it. By allowing players to easily access the system in the locker room, our guests can enjoy their time. It's a better overall customer experience."
Setting the Soundscape
Considering the Girardin Sports Center was built and outfitted during the COVID-19 pandemic, getting the AV into place on time wasn’t easy. “We had to rush to meet the Grand Opening Day deadline,” Bolduc said. “That’s because we wanted to be able to play music on the ice rink and the soccer field on Opening Day. This meant we needed to install the speakers, Bluetooth audio inputs, and the IPX in the dressing rooms by then—which we did. After that, there wasn't as much of a rush for two conference rooms and all the displays.”
All told, it took a month to install all the AV equipment. “The local electric company was very helpful during the construction, putting in all the pipes and cable I needed to complete the job,” Bolduc added.
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Giving the Girardin Sports Center a consistent, reliable, and high-fidelity audio system capable of distributing many streams simultaneously in all areas is no mean feat. For example, the ice rink is a highly reflective surface, while the artificial turf in the soccer arena absorbs sound waves. Then there’s the varying climatic conditions inside the sports center. Granted, the soccer arena and various rooms are set at a comfortable 70 degrees, but the hockey arena is kept near freezing to preserve the ice.
“They needed a speaker system that was capable of holding up in a cold, harsh environment and sometimes being exposed to moisture, as well as needing something with a decent fidelity that would play the music tracks that figure skaters require,” said Dean Standing, AtlasIED’s international sales manager.
SONIMEC installed AtlasIED FS12T coaxial all-weather speakers in the arenas. “The 90x40-degree speakers are perfect for the hockey audience and the 90x90s are right for the soccer area," Bolduc said. "Their range is perfect for announcements and music in a reverberant environment, and they are powerful yet tough. Meanwhile, in the dressing rooms, we installed AtlasIED IPX series clock speakers with Atmosphere Bluetooth audio inputs for teams to play music within the spaces when preparing for the games.”
Not only can players play their own music through the locker room speakers, that capability follows them to the ice rink and soccer arenas. The AtlasIED Atmosphere AZM8—coupled with Atmosphere remote Bluetooth audio input endpoints—can automatically detect a connecting Bluetooth device. As a result, the AZM8 dynamically assigns the appropriate audio settings, such as auto gain control, EQ, and makeup gain, to this input.
“We believed that we must give control of the sound system to the users, so the Atmosphere Bluetooth access point in every zone gives the power to the users,” said Bolduc. “We just set the maximum volume in each zone, and then allow the users to provide their own sound, be it from a smartphone, a DJ, or a music controller and game commentator. In this last case, they just have to flip on the switch on the mic and connect their mixing board to our RCA connectors, and they are ready to go.”
Separation By Design
From an audio perspective, SONIMEC benefitted from the "separation by design" layout of the Girardin Sports Center’s architecture. “Hockey and soccer each have their own zones and they are separated by a hallway,” Bolduc noted. “The 18-player dressing/locker rooms are built with cement blocks, so very little sound leaks from the dressing rooms.”
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To meet the needs of the facility, SONIMEC chose AtlasIED’s Atmosphere audio processing and control platform, IPX loudspeakers, and endpoints to control and distribute audio throughout the building. “The IP-based products from AtlasIED were ideal for our installation," Bolduc said, "as they helped us avoid having to run separate cables to each of the loudspeakers and displays for power—and a completely different type of cable in the facility.”
The AtlasIED Atmosphere AZM8 is the foundation of the center’s multi-channel/multi-playout audio system. The eight-zone audio processor can detect and compensate for ambient noise within the playback zones, has a built-in message player/display system to status reports, and supports up to 16 plug-and-play accessories that can be connected across four accessory ports.
SONIMEC also installed AtlasIED IPX Series displays with built-in loudspeakers in areas of the center. The units deployed included IP-DDS indoor dual-sided displays to show the time and scrolling messages, plus IP-SDM indoor wall mount loudspeakers in the dressing rooms and other smaller spaces. All the IPX Series endpoints are connected to a VoIP network and are PoE+ capable.
In smaller rooms, SONIMEC installed Atmosphere C-ZSV wall controllers to manage the audio system. “We have a wall mount controller that fits in a single-gang electrical box, with an LCD screen on it that will allow you to do source selection and level control for any combination of sources or zones that are connected to the AZM8,” Standing said.
The Girardin Sports Center also has a 10-seat conference room equipped with a ClearOne COLLABORATE Versa Lite system, plus an 80-seat conference room for larger meetings or game strategy sessions. Both spaces have a projector and a monitor with a Barco ClickShare CSE200 wireless presentation system. Bolduc said the restaurant features a 2x2 video wall, plus digital menus and two TVs in the bar area.
The Atmosphere C-ZSV wall controllers give users control of the entire Atmosphere system from various rooms throughout the facility. This includes the ability to control audio, select sources, limit the number of people accessing the system, and adjust the volume for the different spaces—not just from a wall controller, but also a mobile device or a computer.
