The Best Sound They Had Ever Heard: Designing Stadium Sound for VfL Wolfsburg

VfL Wolfsburg  |  Volkswagen Arena  |  David Frangioni

By David Frangioni

A football stadium is the hardest room in the world to make sound great. For VfL Wolfsburg, I designed the system to do it anyway, and Noel Lee, who founded Monster, and I brought Pure Monster Sound to every seat.

When Monster became VfL Wolfsburg’s official acoustics partner, the club set a bold goal: a home ground no other stadium could match for sound. The new system had to be ready for the first home match of the 2017/18 Bundesliga season, against Borussia Dortmund on August 19.

I designed the sound system. Noel Lee, the founder of Monster and the original “Head Monster,” and I implemented Pure Monster Sound across the stadium. Noel built Monster on an idea I have worked by my whole career: music should sound the way it was meant to, no matter how big the room is.

Why Stadiums Sound Bad

Most stadium systems are built to be loud, not to be good. The sound is harsh up front, smeared by the time it reaches the upper rows, and bounced back off the far stand a fraction of a second later. In an open bowl like the Volkswagen Arena, the space itself works against you.

I approached it the way I approach a studio or a reference theater. Who is listening, where are they sitting, and what should they feel? Then I designed for every one of those seats.

The System

The club’s own announcement put the count at 147 loudspeaker cabinets, with the Monster Cube on top of that. When What Hi-Fi visited, it counted 50 subwoofers and as many speaker arrays, each individually tuned, and Noel called it “the biggest audio system in the world, tuned by an audio engineer to audiophile standards.”

Their reviewer found the slap-back echo “next-to inaudible” during a packed match and described “a startling level of clarity unrivalled by the often quite unintelligible PA systems we’ve faced on many an away-day.” For me, that is the review that matters: a fan who could actually understand what he was hearing.

See It for Yourself

Monster documented the job on camera. Watch Noel talk through what we set out to do, then see the rigging crews at work high in the roof and the listening sessions in the seats that shaped the final tuning.

The client told me it was the best sound they had ever heard.

David Frangioni

Thirty Years of Building It Together

Wolfsburg did not start with a phone call in 2017. Monster and the Lee family have been part of my working life for roughly 30 years, starting with Noel himself. Over that time we have pushed each other on one question: how do you make sound feel the way the artist intended, in places nobody thought it could?

A stadium was the ultimate test. Noel brought Pure Monster Sound and a lifetime of obsession with what listeners actually hear. I brought the system design and the discipline I learned in recording studios, where every speaker position and every tuning decision has to earn its place. Together we treated the Volkswagen Arena as a listening room. That was the innovation: not more speakers, but one sound signature carried to every seat.

How it carries into my work now

Everything I learned at Wolfsburg lives in what I do today. Through Frangioni Media, I take on venue sound, content studios for clubs, hospitality spaces and private theaters for players, anywhere in the world. Through Modern Drummer, which I own, I stay close every day to the musicians and recordings that define great sound. My Dolby Atmos mixing keeps me working in the immersive formats teams and leagues are now publishing in.

When a club calls me, they get all of that in one person: stadium scale, studio precision and the kind of long-term collaboration that turns a good idea into the best sound someone has ever heard.

What I Took From Wolfsburg

Clarity beats volume

Anyone can make a stadium loud. Making it clear, balanced and powerful in every seat is design work, and it is the same discipline I bring to studios and theaters.

The far corner counts

The away supporters in the last row bought a ticket too. Designing for the whole bowl, not just the center line, is what separates a sound system from a sound experience.

A team’s sound is part of its brand

Today teams are building their own studios and production companies. The sound in the stadium, in the broadcast, in the podcast room and in the documentary mix should all meet one standard. That is what I build for teams now.

I have done this kind of work for teams before, including the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. The Frangioni Media case study covers the full Volkswagen Arena system, and my Team Studio Series explains how I build for teams today.

Frequently Asked Questions

David