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Eisarena Salzburg upgrades with KV2 Audio sound system

Eisarena Salzburg (Kunsteisbahn), home of Salzburg, Austria’s eleven-time championship-winning ice hockey team, is an indoor arena with a capacity of 3,400 spectators. After more than a decade relying on a patchwork, inconsistent sound system, the venue’s Operational Team turned to a new solution powered by KV2 Audio, to deliver clear, intelligible game announcements.

Over the years, the venue’s sound system had been assembled from mismatched components and no longer met the high-performance, festival-level expectations of professional sports venues. Existing loudspeakers were mounted in three-box clusters aimed in different directions, resulting in more than a dozen conflicting coverage angles in each section - making speech intelligibility practically impossible.

To add to the problem, the glass, concrete, metal, and ice surface caused intense reflections that further reduced clarity. The hockey team’s Operations Team turned to Salzburg-based music shop Key-Wi Music. “We are always looking to support local projects”, says Gerhard Bernegger, Founder and CEO of Key-Wi Music. “As always, we evaluated solutions from major manufacturers, but we were confident that only KV2 could deliver an audio experience that met every technical requirement of the venue.”

To gauge a reliable first impression of a KV2 system, an on-site test was conducted at Eisarena Salzburg by audio-visual engineering specialists AV Mattr, who led the project’s technical management and system integration. “When I was consulted, it was clear that the only viable solution was a coherent point source system”, says Tim Niedermeier, CEO of AV Mattr. “After the on-site test, it was clear that KV2’s point source philosophy and midrange resolution were uniquely suited to Eisarena’s challenging acoustics.”

With the primary goal of achieving uniform coverage while minimising reflections - and without adjustments to the arena’s acoustics - Niedermeier worked alongside lead system designer Stefano Trevisan of KV2 Audio Deutschland to develop the audio system. “At the heart of the system are ten SL412 wide dispersion loudspeakers, which act as the main PA”, explains Trevisan. “We then deployed two ESD10 and four ESD12 loudspeakers in the near and far-range perimeter zones, driven by SL3000D and ESP2000D amplifiers.”

“A key challenge in this type of venue is wavefront tearing, an issue commonly seen in ice rinks”, he continues. To reduce this destructive filtering, all loudspeakers were aimed in the same direction toward the audience and aligned with a central delay line rather than a single point. “This method allowed us to guarantee a coherent wavefront with stable localisation across the entire spectator area.”

As expected for a venue of this type, a strong resonance was observed around 160-180 Hz. “Instead of increasing overall system levels, we pulled the main loudspeakers out of the full-range mode and attenuated the problematic frequencies directly via EQ”, says Niedermeier. “Even under these constraints, the system still delivers a focused +3 dB of punch at 70 Hz - ensuring that music cues and stingers remain impactful, while vocal clarity stays intact.”

Signal distribution is run over redundant Dante (primary/secondary) via Netgear AV-Line switches with analog fallback, managed by Linea Research ASC48 processors. FOH operation and monitoring are handled by a Yamaha QL1 using a custom-built control interface.

(Photos: KV2 Audio)

www.kv2audio.com

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