Full-range Sound System
Jul 28, 2014 12:27 PM
For the past 35 years, the 7,500-seat multipurpose Bicentennial Center Arena in Salina, Kan., has hosted concerts, theater, circuses and civic events, rodeos, basketball, roller derby, and home games for the local Salina Bombers—champions of the Professional Indoor Football League. While the venue has undergone a number of changes over the years, the original sound system—an exploded cluster system located at one end of the arena that was not up to current standards—remained in place. Parkway Communications recently installed a new L-Acoustics ARCS (Arrayable Radial Coherent System) Wide and ARCS Focus loudspeaker rig, called WIFO, for the city-owned venue.
“Having successfully placed ARCS WIFO systems most recently at San Antonio’s Freeman Coliseum, Miami’s BankUnited Center, and Phoenix’s Grand Canyon University, we have a growing body of experience in municipal and professional sports arenas and know how to effectively address them with L-Acoustics solutions,” says Dan Palmer, L-Acoustics’ national manager of installation projects.
“We wanted to make sure from the very start that we were getting every ounce of signal we could to the speakers and no detail was left out, from the eight-gauge wire feeding the clusters to input and output from the booth or floor being transported via AES audio,” says Parkway’s Josh Maichele, the systems engineer on the project.
The new rig incorporates 28 ARCS Wide systems flown in four arrays of four cabinets for the north/south ends of the arena, plus two cabinets for the west end and four corner positions. The east-facing array pairs an ARCS Focus with two ARCS Wide, while six SB18i subs and four LA8 and one LA4 amplified controllers round out the system.
Additionally, a portable floor system consists of four ARCS Wide tops mounted on poles above four SB18 subs. This system can also be deployed as separate point sources on tripods, or as a flown left/right system above a portable stage as dictated by the event. A pair of LA8s powers the portable system.
“Flexibility and functionality were key, and the ARCS WIFO system can accomplish all of this with standard rigging,” Palmer notes. “The system provides articulate, full-range, high-impact sound to all audience listening areas.”
PRODUCT AT WORK:
L-Acoustics ARCS Wide
The ARCS Wide is a constant-curvature WST enclosure. It is designed to generate a wide coverage with few arrayed elements. The loudspeaker enclosure is based on a two-way passive design with a nominal impedance of 8Ω. It features one 12in. LF speaker in a bass-reflex tuned enclosure and one 3in. diaphragm compression driver coupled to a DOSC waveguide.
