Sports Venue Sound

Volgograd, Russia is hosting four World Cup games this month in its new stadium, which sports a MC2-powered Funktion-One system.

Bose systems used throughout entire sports building.

In South Korea, Moots was tasked with putting wireless body microphones on some of the Olympic athletes, correspondents and anchors for a variety of news programming.

By Anthony Savona. It takes a battalion of audio professionals to make sure Music’s Big Night goes off without a hitch.

IMS Technology Services once again handled production for the US Open Squash Championship, held at Drexel University’s Daskalakis Athletic Center in Philadelphia. Inside the event’s custom ASB glass squash court, the Egyptian male and female champions—Ali Farag and Nour El Tayeb—made history as the first married couple in sporting history ever to win the same major sports title on the same day.

The Coors Events Center at the University of Colorado Boulder may be nearly 40 years old, but the 11,500-plus capacity venue is kept up to date with regular upgrades, from its playing surface to its video production room, to its brand-new audio system, which replaced the original one that debuted with the venue’s opening in 1979.

If you look back at the last 15 years of the NBA’s Miami Heat, the team's made it to the finals five times, emerging as the champions three times. Throughout that entire era, Downtown Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena has had the same PA, but recently it came time for the system to be upgraded as the venue moved to new D.A.S. Audio Aero Series 2 and UX Series speakers, installed just last month.

Place Bell Arena’s grand opening was so recent, it still has that new arena smell. Having officially opened September 1, the Laval, Quebec venue is ready to roll, hosting its first season as the home of the Rocket De Laval hockey team, and it’s additionally presenting major concerts, attractions and more. Helping ensure all 10,000 seats can hear everything clearly, the venue installed one of the first Nexo line array systems in North America in a large arena.

By Steve Harvey. A letter to the Federal Communications Commission from a bipartisan Congressional group could potentially make more frequency spectrum available to wireless microphone operators.

Clear-Com, DPA Microphones, Lectrosonics, Sound Devices, and K-Tek will host The Sound Summit Seattle in August, taking over the Columbia City Theater in Seattle on Thursday, August 17, 2017.

By Steve Harvey. The Federal Communications Commission has issued an Order that provides the specific language for the Consumer Disclosure notice to be displayed on wireless mic products operating in the 600 MHz service band.

By David Keene. Registration is heating up for the Rental Staging Roadshow that will take place Wednesday, August 2 in New York City. Stagers and live event producers from the area are registering for the event, to network, see presentations from some of the industry's top players, and get hands-on gear demos. The panel sessions are shaping to be the best in the Roadshow's history. Registration is still open.

By Clive Young. Pro-audio RF wranglers and wireless users may be in for a surprise next month, as T-Mobile announced yesterday that it will make its first in-roads into 600 MHz next month, far head of the original FCC-based transition timeline of 39 months from now, and even ahead of T-Mobile’s news earlier this week that it planned to enter the space by Halloween.

Sennheiser is applauding the Federal Communications Commission’s Order on Reconsideration and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, ratified on July 13, 2017.

The University of Iowa recently updated the audio system in its Carver-Hawkeye Arena for the first time since it opened in 1983. Sound Concepts, the systems operator for the 15,500-seat venue, spec’d a new audio system that included a DiGiCo S21 digital console.

Liberty University's School of Music has a new, unique venue for orchestral and choral music inside its 141,000-square-foot Center for Music and Worship Arts. The facility sports adjustable architectural acoustics, which work in conjunction with a Meyer Sound's Constellation active acoustic system.

A slew of Danley Sound Labs’ Synergy Horn point-source loudspeakers and tapped horn subwoofers were recently installed inside United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, TX, home to Texas Tech University’s Raiders basketball and volleyball teams.

Mention Sonoma, California and cars, and most people picture a peaceful drive through wine country. That pretty much 100 percent not what Sonoma Raceway is like. The 1,600-acre site hosts events 340 days a year, including three of the top racing series, as well as a motorsports industrial park with 70b businesses and 104 shops. And now it also hosts a sizeable new PA based around Community loudspeakers.

Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium is home to the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, and now, to a massive audio system of more than 3,000 loudspeakers, designed and installed by Diversified Systems in collaboration with the Bosch/Electro-Voice team

While the New England Patroits’ win at Super Bowl LI may be fading into the record books now (not soon enough for Atlanta Falcons fans), the day will always be a memorable one for a different team that was onhand that day at NRG Stadium in Houston—the one from Professional Wireless Systems, which was was on-site working with Karl Voss and NFL Game Day Coordinators to supply RF management for the NFL referees and the on-field entertainment.

Lady Gaga performed through a Sennheiser wireless microphone system during a halftime performance at Super Bowl LI that mixed music from her own catalog with patriotic classics.

Football season may be over, but it all got off to a memorable start for 156,990 fans back in September.

Most sports venues take months if not years to build, but Grand Canyon University in Phoenix is in the middle of building 10 in two years—that a new sports facility every 10 weeks. Keeping up with that hectic pace meant that when the Tempe, AZ office of Sound Image (Escondido, CA) came in recently to install a sizable EAW QX system for GCU Stadium, the company did it in one day.

Kellogg Arena has been a top venue for the Battle Creek area for decades, and recently the 6,500-seat facility upgraded its audio offerings with the installation of a new audio system from ISP Technologies.

QSC and Audinate will present a new webinar, “Best Of Both Worlds: Using Dante and Q-SYS in the Same Installation,” on December 8, 2016 at 2:00 PM EST. System Contractor News, PSN’s sister publication, is presenting the online event.

Home to the University of Kentucky’s Kentucky Wildcats basketball team, Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY has been around for 40 years. For most of that time, an audio system nicknamed Big Bertha was used to cover the 24,000 seats, but as part of an ongoing $15-million renovation, that’s been replaced by the largest L-Acoustics K2 sound system ever put into a fixed installation.

Home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals football team, the University of Phoenix Stadium opened a decade ago. Since then, pro audio has advanced considerably and with that in mind, this year saw the facility get a new house audio system before the start of the 2016 NFL season. Designed and specified by the Cardinals, the system consists primarily of flown L-Acoustics K2 arrays permanently installed in July by AV systems integrator Pro Sound & Video.

Yesterday was opening day for the brand-new Jimmy Johns Minor League Baseball Field in Utica, Michigan. Two years in the making, the $15-million ballpark opened its doors on Monday as it hosted the first game of the likewise brand-new United Shore Professional Baseball League. The home team—the Utica Unicorns—beat the Bloomfield-Birmingham Beavers 5-1 before a sell-out crowd of 4,200-plus fans, all of whom heard every play-by-play commentary via an ISP Technologies system of Pro Audio and HDDS gear.

AmericanAirlines Arena may be best-known as the home of the Miami Heat NBA team, but it has a strong musical background, too, hosting major concerts and the Latin Grammy Awards. Helping to bolster the environment inside the venue, facility management recently outfitted its Xfinity East Plaza with a D.A.S. system.

Even though it was only built in 2002, the AT&T Center in San Antonio recently underwent a massive renovation in 2015. That included a new HD main scoreboard and a L-Acoustics sports entertainment sound system package designed by Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams (WJHW) and installed by LD Systems.

The St. Francis High School domed gym hosts everything from regular PE classes to town meetings, music events and more, so when it came time for the facility to get a new system, the school turned to Colorado and Kansas-based DK Audio Video (DKAV).

Colorado School of Mines has been playing football since 1893 and claims to have the “oldest football field west of the Mississippi.” While it’s old, it’s also all brand-new, as the school opened its 5,300-seat Marv Kay Stadium last September, complete with a WJHW-designed audio system built around Community R Series loudspeakers.

An annual mix of pageantry, promotion and performances, the Super Bowl reaches global audiences like nothing else, and this year’s 50th Anniversary edition delivered everything the masses could want and more (unless they were Carolina Panthers fans). One of the keys to making that happen was a portable audio system that could roll on and off the field perimeter at a moment’s notice, all powered by Powersoft amplifiers.

Every team has players it counts on in the clutch, and the audio team at ATK Audiotek is no different. The company once again provided sound reinforcement for the Super Bowl earlier this week, filling Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA with audio at Super Bowl 50, and once again, the SR provider fielded its custom-designed, cart-based audio system, equipped with JBL VerTec line array loudspeakers for pregame and halftime performances

Pro audio is a crucial part of any major sporting event, and yesterday’s Super Bowl 50 between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos was no exception. Whether it was the mics that captured Lady Gaga belting the National Anthem and losing quarterback Cam Newton’s scant 87-word post-game interview, or the massive PA of Levi’s Stadium that helped bring the Coldplay/Beyoncé/Bruno Mars halftime show to the thousands in attendance, pro audio made the day. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Meyer Sound (Berkeley, CA, across the Golden Gate Bridge) was involved in live sound for both the venue and various festivities leading up to the big game.

Hockey arenas tend to treat audio the same way hockey players treat each other—with extreme disregard. The new Complexe JC Perreault in Saint-Roch-de-l’Achigan, Quebec, however, aims to change that tradition, and brought in Montreal-based Solotech to design and install an L-Acoustics Kara and ARCS Wide loudspeaker system at the new facility.

Closing out the NFL season third in their division with an 8-8 record, it was a rough year for the Buffalo Bills, but 2015 also marked a year of firsts for the football franchise. It was the team’s first full season with new owners Kim and Terrence Pegula, who bought the Bills the previous year following the death of the team’s longtime owner Ralph Wilson; the first season under new head coach Rex Ryan; and the first year with fans inside Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo NY enjoying the results of a year-long, venue-wide audio system upgrade.

New remote trucks from NEP and All Mobile Video have integrated Focusrite’s RedNet series of Dante network interfaces and other Dante-enabled systems.

by Clive Young. Belgium-based Audioprof Group has purchased a majority stake in Community Professional Loudspeakers. Summing up reactions inside the company, Community CEO Steve Johnson told Pro Sound News, “It’s been a good day here.”

The Telluride Film Festival in Colorado has always been aimed at true cineasts, but the annual event takes over a variety of spaces that weren’t created with movies in mind. Take the showpiece Werner Herzog Theatre—during the rest of the year, it’s a typical ice-skating rink, but for four days next month, it will be transformed into a 650-seat theater with a complete Meyer Sound 7.1 cinema sound system.

Modern-day troubadour Ed Sheeran has made a name for himself in the US, but that’s nothing compared to back home for him, where his current tour sold 400,000 tickets into two venues alone—London’s Wembley Stadium and Dublin’s Croke Park. As his crowds have grown bigger, going wireless for mics and his guitar have become a necessity—but it wasn’t a hastily made decision.

The Beatles single-handedly invented the stadium concert 50 years ago this month when they played two shows at New York City’s Shea Stadium. Today, fans still can’t get enough of those classic tunes, which is why five decades later, former Beatle Paul McCartney recently played to more than 45,000 fans in Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea.

Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, recently updated the mid-sized audio system in its vast Governors Stadium by installing One Systems loudspeakers.

The new Multisports Center in Ville de Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec, Canada, opened its doors in January to sports enthusiasts, offering basketball, hockey, ice skating, day camp, and a sizable Community Room that includes a Yamaha-centric audio system installed by Le Diplomate Audiovisual of Montreal.

HOUSTON, TX—They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and Houston’s Reliant Stadium certainly fits the bill.

Popular music has been showcased in acoustically challenging environments for decades, pleasing audiences despite the fact that live sound engineers must often fight physics to deliver anything between great and acceptable audio quality.

In any sports venue, whether an open stadium or an enclosed arena, and regardless of the sporting event, there is one overriding goal for the PA system: speech intelligibility.