The Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, is home to MSU Bobcats basketball games and other sports, including track events and the annual statewide high school volleyball tourna- ment, as well as the occasional rodeo. Now that the field house, which seats 7,250 people, has had a new Bose Professional RoomMatch sound system installed, it’s become host to a far wider range of events, including meetings and conferences, receptions, concerts, and trade expos.
Locally-based AV systems integrator Black Box Design, of Big Timber, Montana, installed a system composed of 28 RoomMatch array modules to match the room’s acoustical needs, plus four RMS218 dual-18-inch subwoofers. The system is powered by a total of 15 PowerMatch PM8500N networked amplifiers.
Doug Brekke, president of Black Box Design, knows the Fieldhouse and the college well — he graduated from Montana State and worked there as a student volunteer before starting his own AV business and becoming an area vendor. He teamed up with Bridgewater Acoustics, the regional Bose dealer, to design the RoomMatch system for the space.
“I’m delighted to be able to have line- array performance in an installed-system configuration — it’s the best of both worlds, in terms of performance for both music and speech intelligibility,” says Brekke about this, his first RoomMatch installation. “The coverage we achieved was fantastic, on the floor and the seating areas. The RoomMatch system just has great perfor- mance characteristics.”
Melanie Stocks, director of the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, agrees. “Before last May, when the new system was installed, the ways we could use the Fieldhouse were rather limited,” she explains. “We could do basketball games and track meets, and some music, but even those were sub- ject to having less-than-pristine sound. But
since the new system went in, it’s been wonderful. There are no more complaints about the sound; instead, there are compli- ments about it, including from the addi- tional customers who rent the space. The old sound system was holding us back. The new Bose system has changed all that. And in addition to better sound, it’s also easier for us and our customers to use it — all of the controls are accessible through a Crestron LCD display. Our entire staff has been trained on it, and we no longer need to keep a tech on hand.”
PRODUCT AT WORK
Bose RoomMatch
Bose RoomMatch Progressive Directivity Array loudspeakers include 42 full-range array mod- ules, two companion subwoofers, and rigging accessories, meaning a configuration can be optimized for almost any room size, shape, or acoustics.
