Up to date
Nov 1, 1998 12:00 PM, Gary Eskow
Some say that the intrinsic drama of sports needs no boosting. Green fields, the crack of the bat, bodies reaching for the rebound, along with a scoreboard and the true fan's love of the game, are held to be all that's necessary to make a trip to the stadium or arena satisfying.
Forget it. Today's fan wants more. Enclosed environments in particular offer the possibility of arcade-like effects that keep customers coming back. These days, arena owners are competing with increasingly sophisticated home theater systems, and they are constantly searching for ways to make the experience of coming to a game unique.
Keeping the fan involved with the action throughout the game means wiring the entire facility-rest rooms, public access areas, clubs and walkways-for picture and sound. Additionally, renovation jobs, like the one that Pro Media completed in the fall of 1997 on the Oakland-Alameda County Arena, are more problematic than new installations.
Located in El Sobrante, CA, Pro Media was formed in 1978. The bulk of its work deals with large-format sound system jobs, but systems integration bids, where video and audio elements are conceived as one and seamlessly blended together, are where the business is headed. Consequently, Pro Media brought in WJHW, a Dallas-based consulting firm, as part of the Oakland bid.
"WJHW added credibility to our proposal," said Serb, "because of its knowledge of similar facilities. The National Basketball Association has specific requirements with respect to camera placement and sound pressure. The Golden State Warriors play in the Oakland facility, and WJHW has detailed knowledge of the NBA's demands in these areas."
The scope of Pro Media's assignment was threefold. They were required to renovate the existing sound system, design and implement a facility-wide TV distribution system and create a broadcast cable infrastructure.
"People want a total experience," replied Serb, "whether it be A-V or the game itself. Today's patrons want to see large-screen televisions, hear thunderous sound and have access to instant replays. In the 1960s, we didn't have the technology to project color, and sound systems were dinosaurs compared to what we can offer today, so people's expectations were lower.
"When we're awarded a bid, we're given a mission," Serb continued. "Our clients tell us that they want a sound system that sounds as good as, if not better than, Arena X, with screens that employ the latest and brightest technology. With new construction, the building process often takes so long to complete that by the time the facility is completed, the entire system may be obsolete. Architects want to see what they've asked for verbatim, and you have to work both with their preferences and the needs of the client as you see them.
"The Oakland Arena was a retrofit, an old facility they gutted and reused. At the ground level, a building can be designed to take care of some of the sound system sight-line anomalies-structural impediments to the most natural distribution of sound. With retrofit jobs, we have to work around those restrictions. We had to put a delay system on the upper ring in this facility because of a drop in the ceiling that shadows the main array."
This delay system, by the way, serves only the last 15 or so rows of seats. These seats become shadowed by the shape of the ceiling, and a signal reaching a fan from the main loudspeakers nearly 100 feet (30.5 m) away is matched by 28 JBL 4652 delay loudspeakers.
The Oakland-Alameda County Arena renovation called for a distribution system of nearly 580 closed-circuit televisions spread throughout the facility.
"There are many sets in the clubs and lounges, locker rooms, owners' suites and offices," explained Serb. "Most of the public-access areas are also covered."
Outside of the arena sits a DSS dish with 12 receivers, each of which accesses a single outside channel. In the renovated control room, operators remotely handle the CKU-band dish outside the facility. This dish can pick up some satellite frequencies and handle four channels.
The Warriors produce a series of videotapes each year, and up to eight channels of this pre-programmed material is produced in the control room. Referred to as Welcome TV, these tapes run before and after games.
Serb said that Pro Media and WJHW are generally on the same page when it comes to equipment choices. They have a relationship that dates back to 1988 when they teamed up to renovate Candlestick Park (now know as 3 COM), the home of the San Francisco Giants and San Francisco '49ers. The two firms, however, were of decidedly distinct mindsets when it came down to choosing an audio console.
"WJHW tends to be very conservative when it comes to implementing new technologies, and rightfully so," said Serb. "The Oakland job is a turnkey project. We have a one-year service contract with the arena. Up to this point, there have been no problems with the technology. You can't afford to have equipment crashes when there are 15,000 people in the stands, so you need very good reasons when you decide to switch from the equipment you've been installing. We were convinced that the Yamaha 03D digital mixing console was the right choice for this job."
A smaller configuration of the Yamaha 02D (originally intended for the home- studio market), two 03D units cascaded together were the right choice as a front end for the Oakland-Alameda County Arena because "of their flexibility and ease of use," said Serb. "We use presets that need to be identical each time. For example, there will generally be some kind of pre-game show, after which we switch to the announcer calling the game itself. The post-game setup involves pre-recorded announcements and exit music.
"All of these setups require different presets, especially with respect to opening channels for mics, and the 03D does a solid job of handling them. The 03D also offers good on-board effects and full automation. One handles all of the line-level work-playback of VCRs, DigiCart and CD material. The second board has all of the live mics routed in. These two boards are bused together so that there is one master section on the A board controlling both.
" This is the right product for the application. A typical analog console doesn't provide the features that the Oakland people needed, and my job is to know what is right for a given job, even if we have to go out on a limb a bit. Besides, an analog board that had the functionality of the 03D would cost much more. In addition, space was a factor, and the Yamaha boards fit easily into the control room space."
In the unlikely case of a system failure, Serb pointed out that there is a redundancy in the design. If one mixer went down, the remaining unit could handle enough of the audio load to keep an event going. The same holds true for the JBL DSC-260 loudspeaker processors.
"By the way, the 03D has one capability, surround sound, that we've not implemented," mentioned Serb. "The sound system at the arena is configured in a 50 foot (15 m) ring of JBL loudspeakers. Within that ring are eight clusters. Each cluster has three sections-a down-fill, mid-fill and upper balcony fill. If desired, the operators could use the 03D to pan a sound, say a thunder effect, around that ring and create some great effects."
The upper ring fill uses a four-way JBL loudspeaker system. Each loudspeaker incorporates an 18 inch (457 mm) subwoofer, a 15 inch (381 mm) driver for low frequencies, a JBL 2490 for mids, and a 2451 driver for high frequencies.
"The 18 inch (457 mm) subwoofers really let you access the low end, so if they wanted to pan that thunder effect that we spoke of, it could be quite dramatic," said Serb.
Pro Media designed the loudspeaker cabinets for this area of the building and inserted JBL custom-built horns inside. The existing horns in their product line were too big, so Serb asked them to produce miniature versions, and everyone was pleased with the results.
Audiophiles recoil at the often hideous reverberation inherent in the arena experience, but Serb said that the Oakland facility, which can hold up to approximately 17,000 fans, is better than most because the seats are padded. Empty seats left unpadded help create the hellish low-frequency buildup and high-frequency reflections.
Announcers working the floor use a complement of Shure Beta 57 and Beta 58 mics-both cabled and wireless models.
"Shure mics are the workhorses of the industry," remarked Serb. "We go with proven gear."
The floor monitor loudspeakers are JBL CD 10180s. A Peavey MediaMatrix system is used to mix and distribute several different sound sources throughout the public areas. For example, at various periods during the evening, control operators might decide that they want a radio broadcast in the rest rooms. Later, those same areas might be switched to carry the in-house announcer. This routing can be handled with presets within MediaMatrix, which has redundancy built in with a mirrored hard drive and a backup hot-swappable power supply.
"Another important use of the MediaMatrix involves the emergency paging system," noted Serb. "The fire command system operator can pick up a mic at any time, mute the main sound system and make an announcement. Also, in the event of a hard-disk crash or power supply failure, the system would seamlessly switch over."
Each area within the building-the concourses, rest rooms, clubs and all public areas-has its own outputs within the MediaMatrix setup. These outputs have individual EQ, compression and level settings. Upstairs, in the amp rack room, sit a pair of JBL DSC-260 loudspeaker processors. All of the above settings, plus time delay and crossover, are handled by these processors.
Pro Media and WJHW chose the Crest NexSys power amplification system for the Oakland-Alameda Arena, largely based on the sophistication of the Crest software package.
"We were looking for the most advanced software on the market to control the amps, and at the time, Crest was clearly out in front of the pack," said Serb.
Within the PC-based software, all of the amps in the building can be monitored. Level changes can be affected, clusters of loudspeakers can be muted by muting amps, and the amps themselves can be turned on and off using this program. The Peavey MediaMatrix and the Crest NexSys software coexist on a single computer.
With respect to the outside world, a full production facility located in the upper level feeds instant replay and other information directly to the in-house scoreboard and also through the nearly 600,000 feet (182,880 m) of Belden video and audio cable to truck docks outside the building. Routinely, vehicles from ESPN, NBC, local affiliates and other stations are docked outside, taking these feeds and carrying them back to the network hubs.
The Oakland-Alameda Arena is a perfect example of how older, existing facilities can be retrofitted with the latest technology the industry can offer to satisfy an increasingly sophisticated fan used to the high production values of their home A-V system.
The original budget for the Oakland Alameda Arena did not include funds for a control room, according to Steve Martin, who troubleshoots technical problems for the facility. Lobbying eventually resulted in an allocation of about $400,000 to construct this space, which includes a pair of Sony Beta tape decks, a Grass Valley 250 switcher and several different hard-disc video systems, including a pair of VR 70 video recording and playback machines from ASC. During games, all playback and slow-motion work piped into the in-house monitor comes off the VR 70s. The Beta machines are used to assemble highlight reels after each game and archive footage. Titling is handled by a Maxine Chyron unit, and all routing goes through a 32 x 32 Leitch system. This equipment, plus an Alladin Pinnacle digital video effects device, is all that the staff requires for Warrior games and special events.
In compliance with NBA facility requirements, there is an extensive broadcast cabling system with 19 patch panels inside the building, and each patch panel has two doors sitting side by side. One runs to the TV truck dock, and the other runs to the control room. The NBA is concerned, primarily for playoff situations where a national audience is tuned in, that each facility has locations in specific designated areas, including the event floors, locker rooms and some beauty spot locations. These 19 locations all have triaxial and coaxial cables along with XLR cabling for audio. Fans entering the arena immediately notice two banks of seven 32 inch (813 mm) TV monitors at the concourse level that are controlled from upstairs. The material-highlights from previous games, concert promotions, special ticket offerings-play from a second hard-disc system. These two Digital Video Systems units are eight-channel machines. The arena staff uses the first seven of these channels to send video information to the concourse level monitors. The eighth channel is used as a back up still-store space.
Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus
