Held annually since 1899, the Cincinnati Open is the longest-running professional tennis tournament in the United States. Facing increasing global competition and rising expectations for professional sports facilities, it recently launched a massive $250 million campus transformation to establish the venue as a world-class benchmark for the tennis industry. The expansion more than doubled the facility’s footprint, adding new courts, hospitality spaces, public gathering areas, indoor facilities, and year-round attractions designed to secure the tournament’s future in Cincinnati for decades to come.
The expanded campus required a fully integrated network-based audio platform spanning 10 match courts, 21 practice courts, five new buildings, multiple renovated facilities, and updated common areas. The system needed to support match court audio, site-wide paging, indoor and outdoor background music, broadcast audio distribution, Hawk-Eye officiating system integration, emergency paging, pre-recorded messaging, zoned and all-call communications, and centralized system-wide control. Beyond monitoring the system from a single location, the venue’s AV team required complete control over volume and routing for each zone across the property.
With a long history of providing ongoing AV support to the venue, venue staff contacted Industrial Communication & Sound (ICS) to design the new audio system. Compounding the challenge was the compressed timeline. The ICS integration team had about 60 days to design the changes and approximately five months to complete installation, testing, balancing, programming, and troubleshooting before the start of the tournament. To achieve all the client’s requirements, the design team collaborated to recommend a Dante-based audio ecosystem powered by LEA Professional amplifiers.
“We started using LEA amplifiers about five years ago, and we haven’t looked back,” said Carl Heck, Business Development Specialist at ICS. “We knew they’d be an ideal platform for a world-class tournament environment, given their product catalog, combined with their competitive pricing and robust long-term reliability.”
ICS installed a range of Dante-enabled LEA Connect Series amplifiers to support the diverse needs of the 54 zones within the tennis complex, including the Connect Series 84D, Connect Series 164D, Connect Series 168D, Connect Series 352D, Connect Series 354D, Connect Series 702D, Connect Series 704D, and Connect Series 1504D amplifiers.
The CS84D delivers 80 watts per channel in a 4-channel configuration, while the CS164D and CS168D provide 160 watts per channel in 4- and 8-channel models, respectively. Higher-output applications used the CS352D and CS354D, delivering 350 watts per channel in 2- and 4-channel models, and the CS702D and CS704D, delivering 700 watts per channel in 2- and 4-channel models. For the venue’s most demanding applications, the 4-channel CS1504D supplied up to 1500 watts per channel.
All Connect Series amplifiers are professional-grade, IoT-enabled smart amplifiers suitable for installations of any size, while Dante-enabled models add 96 kHz-capable Dante and AES67 connectivity. They support both Hi-Z (70V or 100V) and Lo-Z, selectable by channel, eliminating the need for separate amplifiers to handle different speaker impedances, while streamlining installations and reducing equipment costs. The Connect Series also includes 96kHz DSP as a standard feature, providing a range of benefits that greatly enhance audio performance and system versatility.
ICS’s technical team used LEA’s free SharkWare software to configure a base profile and push it to all pre-staged LEA amplifiers. SharkWare includes amplifier grouping, offline design, granular user access control levels, locked speaker tunings, and a graphical EQ. SharkWare also allows users to monitor the status of every amplifier connected to the network, as well as the status and performance of individual channels. In addition, the software allows users to view and adjust channel settings, including input settings, signal generator, crossover, equalizer, limiter, and load monitoring, for all LEA Professional Connect Series amplifiers.
The Connect Series is the industry-first professional amplifier family to feature cloud connectivity, a revolutionary advancement, and a significant benefit for anyone maintaining the systems. With LEA Cloud, AV integrators like ICS can remotely control and monitor amplifiers from anywhere, at any time, and with no subscription model or hidden costs. It’s completely free to use.
LEA’s compact single-rack-space amplifier designs enabled ICS’s team to maximize available infrastructure space by integrating equipment directly into existing switch racks, eliminating the need for large, dedicated amplifier racks. The resulting infrastructure allowed virtually any audio source to be routed to any zone throughout the facility. Multiple locations were also equipped to integrate live music directly into the Dante network for localized or zoned distribution as needed.
With year-round programming and a significantly enhanced fan experience, the facility has evolved into a multi-purpose sports and entertainment destination designed to maximize long-term return on investment while reinforcing Cincinnati’s role on the global tennis stage.
“By all accounts from the attendee experience, the player experience, and media response, the Cincinnati Open is now widely considered one of the premier tennis facilities in the world,” said Heck. “That’s definitely in part thanks to LEA amplifiers. We can’t say enough good things about them.”
