How do you deliver clear, intelligible speech to more than 100,000 people inside a fully roofed stadium – when the building is, in fact, a church?

 

At the centre of this session is The Ark Legacy Project in Nigeria, an extraordinary worship venue designed as a fully enclosed stadium-style bowl for 109,000 seated worshippers, with overflow capacity bringing the total congregation to more than 150,000 people. A circular LED surface of more than 7,000 m² and concert-scale production infrastructure add another dimension to the acoustic and electroacoustic challenge.

 

Unlike a conventional stadium, however, the primary acoustic requirement is not spectacle or maximum sound level, but speech intelligibility: every member of the congregation should be able to clearly understand every word.

 

Sergio Molho of WSDG takes attendees behind the scenes of the acoustic and sound system design, showing how 3D acoustic modelling, room-acoustic prediction and electroacoustic simulation were used to develop and coordinate the design with the architecture. The session explores the relationship between room acoustics, loudspeaker coverage, intelligibility and architectural integration at an exceptional scale.

 

Additional examples from WSDG projects, including MGM Music Hall in the USA and Billionaire St. Moritz in Switzerland, illustrate how the same fundamental design principles can be adapted to very different performance and entertainment environments.

 

 

• How to approach speech intelligibility and sound system design in exceptionally large enclosed venues.

 

• How 3D acoustic and electroacoustic modelling can guide design decisions before construction.

 

• The interaction between room acoustics, loudspeaker coverage and speech intelligibility at stadium scale.

 

• Strategies for integrating large-scale A/V systems, LED and technical infrastructure into ambitious architecture.

 

• How principles developed for extreme-scale venues can translate to concert, entertainment and other performance environments.

 

 

Sound system designers, integrators, acoustic consultants, house-of-worship technical teams, venue owners and operators, production managers, architects and technical planners working on large-scale performance, worship and entertainment venues.

 

 

30-45 minute case study and practical tutorial presented by Sergio Molho, Senior Partner, Co-CEO WSDG.