Located in the city of Gangneung on the east coast of South Korea, Gangneung Ice Arena is a new indoor venue which has been built for world figure skating and short track speed skating events in 2018 and as a permanent legacy facility for local recreational use.

The Gangneung Ice Arena has a seating capacity of 12,000 and houses two 60m x 30m ice rinks, for competition and training respectively. With four floors above ground and two underground, the arena has been designed using an environmentally friendly ice cooling system.

The sound system for the Gangneung Ice Arena was designed and supplied by Inter-M Corporation, assisted by Desco Co. Ltd. on the installation. The Inter-M design was accurately calculated for the required intelligibility, sound levels and coverage and was based around Community R SERIES loudspeakers.

For the main competition rink, Inter-M used forty R2-694Z high power, full-range, three-way loudspeakers to achieve the required sound levels and coverage. These are supplemented by four R2SUBDF subwoofers, which add low frequency extension and impact for wide bandwidth, high quality music. The system is controlled from a Midas PRO2/IP console, with Symetrix Edge DSP. Lab.gruppen C 28:4 amplifiers power the Community loudspeakers.

The training rink uses a less powerful, but similar system, to give skaters consistency of audio quality for training and competition. In the training rink, Desco used fourteen R.25-94Z and eight R.5-94Z. The training system also uses a Midas PRO2/IP console, Symetrix Edge DSP and Lab.gruppen C 28:4 amplifiers.

Inter-M’s selection of loudspeakers for the venue was based on the need for high quality speech and music, power and accurate coverage. Additionally, whilst Gangneung Ice Arena is an indoor venue, ice rinks present challenging climatic conditions and acoustics, and all over the team felt the all-weather R SERIES the ideal choice on this occasion.