Design and analysis of the sound reinforced system for the FIFA world cup 2014 stadium “DUNAS ARENA”, in Natal.

The FIFA World cup 2014 will involve several different towns in Brazil and in most of them new stadia were designed and realized. Amongst them, one of the most important examples is the Dunas Arena stadium in Natal. In order to analyze the efficiency and quality of the sound reinforcement system of the stadium, a numerical, 3D model was realized and utilized to determine eventual acoustic and electroacoustic limitations. For this purpose, two different numerical modelling software were considered to improve the credibility of the results. In order to analyse the acoustic quality of the stadium (that might be utilized for pop/rock music concerts) and the global intelligibility, the numerical evaluation comprised the determination of the number, the position, the orientation, the typology and model of the loudspeakers (and of other electroacoustic devices). This optimization was also combined with the global cost of possible acoustic corrections, in order to limit the investment while enhancing the intelligibility. In this paper, the main aspects of the acoustic design will be presented, together with some results.