A volume extravaganza

Ice-hockey is a loud game! I am not just talking about the skates on the ice and the impacts, I am also referring to the fans.

Many historical and regional ice-hockey arenas in Scandinavia have low ceilings, steep audience tiers and almost no sound absorptive treatment. They are full, loud and intense places. The speech intelligibility is low, but no one bothers because the atmosphere is electrifying.

One stands out of the pack and it is the extraordinary Globen in Stockholm. It has a ceiling height of 80m above the ice, a large exposed dome towering above a 13,000-seat capacity, much of it on low rake retractable seating.

With 80m ceiling height, it takes sound reflections nearly half a second to come back!

The volume is so great that no crowd of fans can truly excite the place. Energetic chants dissipate quickly in such volume. Sound reflections take half a second to come back and then only their low frequency components are audible.

It sounds dull and unresponsive. It is really hard work to cheer for your team, let alone hear what they are doing.

Luckily, ARD has investigated and spent a good deal of time over the last months developing with world-class partners a solution to bring excitement to both Stockholm teams and their fans.