Allianz Stadium, Sydney

Context

The Team

Game-Day Clarity at Allianz Stadium 

The 42,500-seat Allianz Stadium stands as one of Australia’s premier multi-sport arenas. Serving as the home ground for the Sydney Roosters of the National Rugby League, the New South Wales Waratahs of Super Rugby, and Sydney FC of the A-League, the venue hosts more than 50 fixtures a year alongside international matches and major summer concerts. When Venues New South Wales sought an audio upgrade to match the world-class architecture of the facility, the brief demanded pin-sharp speech clarity for on-pitch announcements and post-match interviews, alongside raw, physical impact for high-energy fan moments. Recognizing the exact directivity and acoustic capabilities of Kara IIi, Venues New South Wales selected JPJ Audio to deploy a permanent L-Acoustics solution.

The Challenge

The central hurdle lay in taming the stadium’s five-second reverberation time, which threatened to ruin speech intelligibility by allowing overlapping sound waves to linger across the bowl. An indiscriminate sound system would excite the architecture and destroy the game-day experience. The design brief required extremely controlled, localized coverage to aim acoustic energy directly at the audience, keeping it off the reflective structures. Furthermore, installation logistics were highly restrictive. The stadium remained fully operational throughout the upgrade, and crews faced a strict ban on cranes, boom lifts, or any contact with the playing surface. The sole solution for establishing new cable paths and rigging the arrays was rope access from the roof structure.

The Solution

JPJ Audio designed and deployed a permanent, full-bowl Kara IIi system to address the demanding acoustic environment. Leveraging Soundvision predictive modeling in collaboration with the L-Acoustics applications team and Tom Williams of Clair Global, JPJ Audio precisely mapped array angles, subwoofer positioning, and coverage zones before a single speaker hung. The team divided the stadium bowl into four quadrants, each served by five array types tailored to the seating geometry and roof height. The complete system utilizes 232 Kara IIi and 52 SB18i, flown beneath the roof gantry on custom-designed metalwork. Kara IIi provides exact directivity, placing audio energy strictly where needed. To navigate strict site access rules, JPJ Audio adopted a touring-style workflow. The crew assembled, wired, and phase-checked every array off-site at their warehouse. Upon arrival, they employed a load transfer technique to lift the pre-built units from four vomitories into their final positions over the seating bowl.

The Result

Final on-site loudspeaker deployment took exactly five days. The system successfully debuted for an A-League fixture on January 18, 2026. The permanent Kara IIi installation effectively tames the venue’s long reverb tail, delivering exceptional sound clarity and powerful low-frequency impact across every seat. Amplification is provided by 78 LA4X controllers arranged across four amplifier rooms on level four. Operators now rely on a streamlined Q-SYS graphical user interface, utilizing the venue’s internal network switches for control and audio distribution, to continuously monitor system health. L-Acoustics checks loudspeaker impedance every minute, ensuring a reliable, stadium-wide audio experience for every match.

Project photos