Home to the French rugby league team the Catalans Dragons, Stade Gilbert Brutus in Perpignan underwent a 2-phase expansion in 2006 and 2010 to bring capacity up to 13,000 with 3 all-seater stands. The southern French city is also home to the rugby union team USAP, whose home stadium Stade Aimé Giral is equipped with a NEXO GEO S12 sound system, installed by local AV technology specialists Sud Media System.
Clearly impressed by the sound at their neighbour’s stadium, Stade Gilbert Brutus recently contracted Sud Media System to install a NEXO system at their ground, following a public tender process.
The choice of several prestigious sporting venues including Croke Park in Dublin, Optus Stadium in Perth, Japan’s Toyota Stadium and the French national stadium the Stade de France, NEXO’s GEO S12 has earned an enviable global reputation for performance, dependability and cost-efficiency.
Available in EN54-rated and long-throw versions, and in shallow or steeper tapering cabinets to allow for larger array angles, the compact, 2-way GEO S12 is a scalable loudspeaker module that displays exceptional MF-LF output (103dB SPL nominal sensitivity -1W @1m) from a single 12-inch LF driver and NEXO’s proprietary Directivity Phase Device (DPD). NEXO’s unique Hyperboloid Reflective Wavesource (HRW) allows coupled cabinets to radiate as coherent, wavefronts, yielding precise pattern control in vertical or horizontal arrays.
The system at Stade Gilbert Brutus was designed by NEXO’s Engineering Support team using the company’s NS-1 system configuration software. An intuitive drag and drop interface includes all NEXO systems with measured speaker data processed along with complex mathematical data to predict SPL and delay coverage in 3 dimensions.
NS-1 combines full acoustical and mechanical computations along with tools for optimising curved vertical array design. A Help section defines mechanical constraints to establish flown system safety, and generates reports for system dimensions, weight, gravity centre position, forces, moments, working load and safety factors.
The Bonzoms Stand is covered by six clusters of 3 x GEO S12, supplemented by 6 x NEXO P10 point source loudspeakers covering the highest seats in the stand on a delay.
Six clusters of 4 x GEO S12 cover the West Stand and a further 7 x P10s cover the smallest stand, with amplification and processing provided by NEXO’s networkable NXAMPMk2 powered controllers.
The notoriously windy conditions in Perpignan required the team at Sud Media System to manufacture and certify custom brackets to attach the new enclosure clusters to the existing structures.
Members of the NEXO Engineering Support team visited the stadium to tune and commission the new sound system, including Carole Marsaud (pictured centre). “It was good to work with the team from SMS who completed a very clean installation at this second stadium in Perpignan. The sound was great in all the stands, and we achieved excellent results for both SPL and intelligibility.”
For further information on NEXO sound solutions for sports stadia, visit nexo-sa.com
For further information on Sud Media System, visit sudmediasystem.fr
