GYM DANDY

Reading High School Ready for Tip-Off

Reading High School is located in Reading, PA, equidistant from Philadelphia, 60 miles to the southeast, and the state capital of Harrisburg to the west. Seeking to upgrade their gymnasium’s sound system, they contacted SAGE after experiencing the quality of their work first-hand at several nearby schools.

It began with a single phone call from the client, Director of Facilities Daniel Morcombe, to SAGE’s Systems Specialist, Mark Showers.

Reading High School’s gymnasium isn’t the dank, drafty, multi-use facility with faded lines that you visited twice a week for your mandatory Physical Education period. With its dual-level bleachers, official press box, and 3,200-person capacity, it could masquerade as a mid-size Division 1 college arena. In fact, Reading High School’s impressive gym has played host to Pennsylvania’s state high school basketball championship tournament in years past.

Reading HS wanted to know if anything could be done to their existing sound system, but simultaneously considered a outright replacement. Showers found that their existing system was quite old and there had not been upgrades to it for many years – a considerable number of the speakers had questionable drivers or blown horns, and the center cluster as a whole had coverage pattern issues. Therefore, there were limited (if any) performance benefits that could be derived from tweaking the existing system. SAGE and Reading talked both about budgeting issues and the future plans for their school. With that knowledge, Showers and SAGE engineering staff used Peavey Architectural Acoustics products as the cornerstone of the projected system. Reading approved the design and summary installation.

The Reading High School gymnasium covers approximately 20,000 square feet. With a 40-foot ceiling, the room contains an incredible amount of air-mass. Coupled with Reading High School’s desire to “make the system thump,” Showers and company needed to install enough power to both drive the air mass and maintain the subtlety needed to produce intelligible audio in a massive room full reflective-surfaces.

GYMNASIUM INSTALLATION

SAGE Lead Project Technician Galen Kraybill designed a center loudspeaker cluster consisting of six Peavey Architectural Acoustics QW-3 three-way enclosures above the suspended scoreboard. To make best use of the cabinet’s dispersion pattern, two QW-3s are directed at each sideline and one aimed at each baseline.

Even though it was the first time that SAGE used the QW-3 loudspeakers, technicians were comfortable with them because they had used Architectural Acoustics products on installations for years. Reliability and toughness make Architectural Acoustics one of SAGE's stand-by brands. Engineers performed distance loss calculations based upon the 1 watt per 1 meter output levels of the QW-3. Based upon the price versus performance factors, SAGE found that Architectural Acoustics equipment was what they needed to rock the room.

Always cautious about installing a never-before-tried piece of gear, Showers and Kraybill ran the QW-3s through a series of sound level pressure tests before installation. They were both very impressed with the clarity, voice range, and overall bass response of the cabinets.

SAGE’s engineers decided that in order to achieve quality sound and avoid the out-of-phase sonic jungle so common in gymnasiums, Reading High School needed to augment their center cluster with two delay rows, each consisting of four Peavey Architectural Acoustics Quadra 15 two-way enclosures ceiling-mounted above the double-tiered sideline bleachers.

It was immediately evident when Showers first surveyed the gym that RT time was going to be a factor. Galen later measured an RT time of more than five seconds. Showers knew he was dealing with an educated customer when the Daniel Morcombe immediately said, "We need a delay row." SAGE later found out that Morcombe had worked at another school that upgraded to a center cluster system with a delay row for far superior sonic results, so he knew what he wanted.

Showers knew that the Quadra 15s would work well as delay speakers, since SAGE had previously installed them in several similar projects with exceptional results. Each has a small, resilient enclosure, strong enough to withstand direct and consistent basketball attacks, and each generates a significant sound pressure level.

A Peavey Architectural Acoustics Digitool™ MX digital signal processor was installed to provide eight independent channels of signal processing. Selected primarily because it offered similar functional performance at a lower cost than the two DSP packages typically used throughout the industry, the 2RU Digitool MX utilizes parallel 24-bit SHARC processors to provide superior sonic performance.

The Digitool MX’s eight input channels were allocated to provide signal processing (compression, limiting, parametric EQ, etc.) for main house feeds, and an additional channel was used for crossover and time-alignment delay for delay speakers. The simplistically designed device allowed Galen Kraybill to rapidly program all of the presets with little effort.

The Digitool MX is capable of supporting multiple remote control stations, and in this application the customer accesses Kraybill’s presets through an Architectural Acoustics D4S preset recall control panel and two Architectural Acoustics D1V volume control panels.

Any time SAGE programs and installs a Digitool or a MediaMatrix system, technicians closely interact with the customer about the potential uses for the room, providing them all the necessary presets for the facility’s applications. After the system is programmed, set, and locked down, with all presets backed up, SAGE shows the customer how to access the presets through the control interface.

“Usually a gym teacher doesn’t have a degree in audio engineering," remarks Showers. "The people who will be operating the system just want basic, necessary, and reliable tamper-resistant control of the system. They like having fine-tunable controls far beyond the reach of wandering hands, because it doesn’t take too many turns of a wrong knob to get a bass-happy fan into trouble with the gain structure on a sound system.”

All power is supplied by a rack of five Architectural Acoustics IP 8.5C dual-channel amplifiers. Two of the amps power the eight Quadra 15 delay loudspeakers, one amp powers the two QW-3 ‘baseline’ speakers, and the remaining two IP 8.5Cs power the four QW-3 ‘sideline’ loudspeakers.

Given Reading High School’s desire to make the system “thump,” Showers and his fellow SAGE employees briefly considered boosting the system with subwoofers. Due to the large space and the RT time of the lower frequencies in the room, SAGE needed to be careful to not excite the air mass too much. Since this system is primarily used to project the announcer’s voice clearly over a screaming crowd, and secondarily to play modern music before, after, and during in the game, SAGE avoided subwoofers. There is safety in numbers with six QW-3s and eight Quadra 15s driven by a rack of five power amps.

SAGE also upgraded the gym’s peripheral areas. This includes the press booth, which sits above the second-tier of bleachers on the home side of the court, glassed-off from the main space. An Architectural Acoustics UM-10 ten watt mixer/amplifier grants press attendees control over their booth’s volume and, should reporters require their own recorded copy of PA action, allows for a line-out.

In the control booth next to the press box, SAGE installed a Teac AD-600 3-disc CD player/cassette deck for music playback, rack-mounted with the Architectural Acoustics IP 8.5C power amps. A Telex SM-1 Assistive Listening System was installed for the main seating area, providing hearing impaired fans with individual earbuds so they can enjoy the action. Finally, SAGE upgraded Reading’s existing microphones, replacing the main PA microphone with a Crown CM-310ASW differoid condenser and adding a hand-held Audio Technica AEW-4260 for wireless applications.

SUMMARY

The Reading High School installation took two weeks to complete due to gymnasium availability. During this period, Galen Kraybill spent more time up on a lift replacing hanging speakers than he did on the hardwood ground. Almost immediately after project completion, the 2003-2004 basketball season tipped-off, putting the new system through its paces.

"Reading High School is extremely pleased with their new sound system," Showers concludes. "The PA announcer comes through loud and clear over the screaming crowds, and music sounds great through the Architectural Acoustics enclosures. We were excited when we drew up the plans because we felt like it would address their needs for years to come and fit within their budget. And, sure enough, it did! Pleasing a customer is always the most satisfying aspect of this business.”