Community Chosen by Interton for Debrecen Competition Swimming Pool

The Debrecen Competition Swimming Pool is one of Hungary’s most modern
sports facilities, handed over for the 11th European Short Course Swimming
Championship.

‘It was the fulfilment of one of our longest dreams” said Lajos Kósa, Mayor
of Debrecen, “To have a facility that serves the needs of the citizens, the
fans of this wonderful sport and the swimmers themselves. Since the official
opening ceremony, we have hosted the short-course National Championships, an
international water-polo tournament and numerous other events”.

A special feature of the pool is a moving wall, which can be used to adapt
the 50 metre pool to 33 or 25 metres. As well as the 50 metre competition
pool, the complex has a 25 metre training pool, a teaching pool, a Jacuzzi,
a Finnish sauna and an outdoor thermal water pool.

Providing good sound in a swimming pool is always a complex and difficult
task. The requirements for Debrecen were common to the international sports
facilities of its type; high SPL to overcome the significant background
noise of the visitors, sound quality, weatherproof against high humidity
and, last but not least, high speech intelligibility in a very reverberant
environment.

To fulfil all of these criteria, Budapest-based Interton Ltd designed and
installed a system using Community R2 loudspeakers as an obvious and ideal
choice.

The sound system designed by Interton for the main pool consists of six
Community R2 loudspeakers, powered by QSC PLX3102 amplifiers. High SPL,
quality sound and weatherproof finish was not a problem for the R2, which
gave an average SPL above 110dB, but, due to hard and reflective materials
such as water, concrete, glass and tiles, the most problematic issue was
speech intelligibility. To overcome this, Interton designed a unique cluster
of R2’s, where six R2s were hung beneath each other, forming a high powered,
critically aligned column. The solution provides an average STI of 0.47 and
in some areas reaches 0.6.

Interton confirmed that both visitors and operators are completely satisfied
with the result. During the 11th European Short Course Swimming
Championship, organizers remarked that the sound reinforcement was
excellent, the sound was clear and the speech intelligibility was by far the
best compared to previous venues.

Interton also supplied a mobile sound system for the building, with four
Community R.5-94 loudspeakers providing sound for trainings and other local
events.