Description

About a year ago Lake Sumter Community College contacted us about an audio renovation of their Gymnasium. The old system was antiquated and broken, in its best days it did not perform very well. Over the years they had tried to put patches on it, installing other speakers with little luck or success. The main complaint was poor coverage and intelligibility with all kinds of feedback problems.

Multi use and no feedback were the key words for the new system. We had athletic events, classes, clinics, and other events that include the college's main graduation.

The system consists of a primary audio booth in the bleachers and a floor level remote operation rack. Each station can activate 3 presets on remote panels. Ashly processing was chosen to handle the system processing and preset switching. The system has 2 zones of audio, the main floor and the bleacher area. Presets for the Main Floor, Bleachers Only, and a combined Main Floor and Bleachers allow the user to choose how much of the audio system to use. Many functions don't need the whole system. The object is to only produce signal where it is needed(remember what a gym sounds like empty).

Radian Audio's RCX 122PV's were chosen for the main floor because speech articulation in this reverberant environment was key. The bleacher speakers are Radian RCX 108PV. Both are Dual concentric coaxial speaker design, point source alignment at its best. The mix duties from the main booth are handled by an Allen & Heath Mix Wizard. A U.S. Audio Mix6 was chosen for simple control from the floor. Crown XTi amplifiers at the heart of the system.

At last report, Greg Cuumba who is the college's main technical person reported that the 08-09 graduation had gone off as well as expected, with minimal issues.