AM Stadium Series for Lithuania’s New Siauliai Arena

Siauliai — the fourth largest city in Lithuania — had long toyed with the idea of building a modern sports arena, and the opportunity came when Lithuania won the right to host the 2011 European Basketball Championship.

Two years ago, Siauliai gained financial support from the EU for a multifunctional complex — a sports and entertainment arena. Developers were selected and the Lithuanian Government granted this structure the status of an object of national importance.

The building would be of glass construction and the sports arena — with a capacity of over 5,000 seats — needed to be easily reconfigurable into a concert venue with 7,000 seats.

Martin Audio’s territorial distributors, Audiotonas, won a competitive open tender to provide all sound reinforcement including public address and voice evacuation systems.

Audiotonas’ Algirdas Sidiskis reports that despite the additional costs involved, the company managed to get the originally specified loudspeakers replaced with Martin Audio’s AM horn-loaded stadium series, based on the pedigree of the brand.

The AM series was sold on its versatility, since the sound reinforcement not only needed to demonstrate high speech intelligibility but also reproduce music across the full bandwith.

The sound reinforcement was divided into ten clusters, comprising a combination of 16 x AM906 high-powered mid/high large-format 90° x 60° horn enclosures and 14 x AM604P 60° x 40° enclosures, supported by eight AS118 18in hybrid folded horn subs. The clusters were carefully designed and angled to provide even coverage — from the bleachers up to the top tier.  Six of the AM604P’s are mounted inside the video cube structure itself and focused onto the basketball court.

The entire system is powered by a pair of Martin Audio MA6.8Q and eight MA4.8Q 4-channel amplifiers.