Before Cleveland Cavaliers basketball fans enter the over 19,000-seat Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in downtown, Cleveland, Ohio, many will have the opportunity of experiencing a very special portal leading into the multipurpose venue. To create this guest experience, Metropolitan Interactive (Oxford, CT) executed a design/install of a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system and some very clever digital video content.
Michael Conley, SVP & Chief Information Officer for the Cavaliers had something very specific in mind for the Fieldhouse, which is also home to the Cleveland Monsters AHL hockey team and over 200 ticketed events annually. Guests would enter through a ‘power’ portal, a seamless dvLED tunnel experience designed and implemented by ANC LiveSync and coupled with d&b audiotechnik’s immersive Soundscape system, all integrated and installed by Met Interactive.
“Choosing d&b Soundscape using the DS100 processor with En-Scene software was one of our earliest decisions and gave us the ability to move the sound around the space to be aligned with the video content,” says project leader Richard Gold. “The system and speakers are hidden under LED sidewalls primarily. When the project team realized more speakers were required, we added speakers at ceiling height at either end of the portal.”
Soundscape is powered by the DS100 Signal Engine, based on a Dante-enabled signal matrix. It supports design creativity with two software modules, En-Scene and En-Space.
For the Cavaliers content and theatrical sound design were performed by Broken Chord. The Cavs built their own content design studio on premises so they can continually update material for each home game. Gold said the content easily transitioned from content studio to the power portal, and that Soundscape exceeded their expectations. “What surprised me in a good way was that we originally planned on the visual to help guide the position of the audio in order to obtain a vertical access, but we found we could also make the sound appear to be coming from the ceiling.”
The design of the portal space is dynamic to include audio and video as an interactive experience based on what is scheduled for a particular day, whether a Cavliers game or an Elton John concert.
“The power portal has become a popular fan destination and will be for many years to come,” adds Conley. The organization is also experimenting with piping real-time data into the visual experience, further personalizing a fan’s experience as they navigate from the atrium to the concourse and back.
