Mexico. Mexico City's Estadio Azteca boasts an impressive number of ''firsts'', including the first stadium to host two FIFA World Cup finals (1970 and 1986) and which would serve as the main venue for Latin America's first Olympic Games (1966). In addition, the official capacity of 87,000 people ranks first among stadiums in Latin America, while an impressive elevation of 2,195 meters makes it the highest among the world's elite football stadiums.
Earlier this year, Estadio Azteca joined its list of notable distinctions when it completed what is not only the largest installation to date of Meyer Sound CAL digital beam steering column array speakers, it is also the first Meyer Sound stadium system to deploy the latest in AVB/TSN network technology.
The 69-speaker distributed system projects highly intelligible, full-bandwidth voice announcements, incidental music and video soundtracks onto Panasonic screens throughout the vast stadium. The advanced beam direction technology built into CAL allowed Meyer Sound engineers to precisely adjust the extent and tilt of the beam for uniform coverage, while the thin profile of the CAL speakers keeps the sight lines open.
"We approached Meyer Sound for this new system simply because they offered us the best solution," sums up the audio manager of the Azteca stadium, Alejandro Aguirre. "We needed the latest technology and the CAL system with AVB met all our requirements."
For the bottom ring, the system deploys 24 CAL 64 speakers along with 10 600 HP subwoofers for low-frequency extension. The top ring is covered by 26 CAL 96 and eight CAL 64 speakers, with an additional CAL 96 covering the playing surface. Two GALAXY 816 network processors are placed at the head of the system for overall optimization, and two RMS servers are inserted into the network for complete state monitoring and troubleshooting.
The GALAXY 816 master processors are connected to the control room master switch via AVB/TSN, with bidirectional signals routed through a fiber optic network from the control room switch to the eleven local switches distributed around the stadium. Each local switch connects to its assigned group of CAL speakers via the Cat-5e cable. All switches are from the Extreme Networks X440-G2 series.
"The stadium hosts a variety of events, not just football. We also have concerts, religious events, and the annual NFL games. It was essential that we had intelligible audio in every seat, and with the power and clarity needed to deliver a complete viewing and listening experience alongside HD displays. All this has been achieved with the new Meyer Sound system," Aguirre said.
Designed by architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Rafael Mijares Alcérreca, the main structure of the Estadio Azteca was completed in 1966. It had a maximum capacity of 115,000 in 1986, but safety restrictions and the eventual replacement of seats with VIP boxes have reduced overall capacity. The Mexican media company Grupo Televisa owns both the stadium and its main user, the football team of the Club América association.
