The University of Wisconsin has seen 20 dBTechnologies Arena 15 loudspeakers installed in its Quandt Fieldhouse, Stevens Point basketball arena, with Soundworks Systems taking care of the installation.
The arena, which also caters for a number of non-sporting events, including concerts and assemblies, required a sound system that could handle such a multitude of applications.
Brian Baumann and Kent Laabs of Soundworks Systems presided over the design and installation. They explained: "The audio system needed to be capable of high SPL's for UWSP Pointer basketball games and other athletic events. It needed to be capable of clear music reproduction whilst maintaining high speech intelligibility for both low and high SPL events. On top of all that, budget was a factor.
"The room itself presented acoustic challenges which included its mezzanine type area with tiered seating and a plexi-glass-faced guard rail system," the pair continued. "We needed to mitigate unwanted reflections from the maple floor, painted block walls and especially the plexi-glass. We divided the room into 8 zones in order to accommodate the permanent seating, temporary bleachers and floor seating with delay and zone presets.
The two-way passive Arena 15 is designed to offer optimum low frequency reproduction and comes with a compression driver with a 1.4" voice coil, aimed at providing flexibility across a range of applications. With a high SPL of 129dB and weighing in at 23.7kg, it is intended to allow for simple installation.