Qatar is doing a good job of establishing itself as the Middle East’s sporting hub. It
has already hosted its fair share of high-profile international competitions, and this
activity is only going to increase as it moves towards the headline year of 2022.
It’s also home to a variety of sports clubs, many of which are in the process of
upgrading their own facilities.
Among them is Qatar’s oldest sports club, Al Ahli SC. The new 12,000-seat Hamad
Bin Khalifa stadium is home to the club’s top flight football team, but is also
equipped for other sporting pursuits such as basketball, tennis, handball and
athletics. Following a competitive selection process, Doha-based systems integrator,
AVT, was chosen to design and install the A/V and broadcast systems for the whole
facility. Alongside the headline main stadium PA, this also included solutions for the
multi-purpose hall, conference room, mosque and administration building.
The main PA is the jewel in the crown for any stadium project, and at Al Ahli it
provided an interesting challenge. For many stadia, clusters of cabinets are hung
from the front lip of the roof to cover the seating area. However, only the main
stand of the Hamad Bin Khalifa stadium has a roof and as such an alternate solution
needed to be found.
To solve this challenge AVT found a variety of mounting points to ensure the whole
stadium could be covered with a distributed system of Renkus-Heinz TRX121/9
speakers and PN112SUB subs. In the main stand it was able to use the lip of the
roof to hang the weatherproof cabinets. While on the opposite side, a large wall
running the length of the pitch provided the optimum installation position. Finally,
the speakers covering either end of the stadium have been flown from regularly
spaced poles around the rear of the seating area firing down towards the pitch.
“Kiran Dias, our sound engineer did the initial design for the stadium. When the
project was awarded to us, we tweaked some of the design based on the existing
site conditions. From there we took over as the project team,’ recalls Julien Allag,
AVT’s project manager for the installation.
Sources for the system include a rack-mounted RCF MS1033 CD player and a
variety of Sennheiser wireless mics. Power is via a rack of QSC amplifiers and
control is from a Allen & Heath GLD-80 digital console. A short walk through the
main stand leads to the second major area of the install, the indoor multi-purpose
hall. With the same Renkus-Heinz TRX121/9 speakers, Sennheiser mics and QSC Q-
Sys control with Allen & Heath mixing – this time on a Zed22FX – there is a familiar
feel to the installed solution.
“The main part of the installation took us from March to September,” concludes
Allag. “We have a good team who worked well together on the project. I’m very
happy with how everything has turned out.”
Published courtesy of Pro Audio MEA
