Community Pumps Up Boston College Alumni Stadium Chestnut Hill, MA - Boston College is known for its passionate sports fans, and being heard over the roar of the enthusiastic crowds at Boston College's Alumni Stadium is no mean feat. The 45,000- seat stadium recently completed a 7 month sound system renovation that included a new, state-of-the-art distributed audio system to get the announcements everywhere they need to be. The system utilizes a combination of nearly 300 Community WET and R-Series weather-resistant loudspeakers throughout the venue, including 60 WET 2W8 two-way systems and 28 WET 920H three-way cabinets, as well as more than 150 R.25 and R.5 horn-loaded two-way systems cover the general seating areas, concourses and restrooms. In addition, the 67 skyboxes located around the stadium received new speaker systems. "The WET and R-Series speakers are as durable and dependable as you can wish for, and that's the perfect fit for the harsh Boston winters," explains All Pro Sound Project Manager Patrick Nunnally of Pensacola, FL-based All Pro Sound. The firm worked with acoustical consultants and system designers Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams (WJHW, Inc.) of Dallas, TX to deliver the Alumni Stadium's new system. A Midas Venice 24 channel console handles mixing duties, and the system is powered by more than fifty Crown CTS-Series amplifiers loaded with Crown IQ DSP cards for control. The distributed system DSP is driven by MediaMatrix' new NION (Network Input Output Node) digital audio processing system. The system features three separate equipment locations strategically placed around the stadium with a fiber-optic backbone connecting all for complete head-end control and monitoring from the sound booth location. A custom GUI (graphic user interface) was built by All Pro Sound technical staff to allow the operator to quickly monitor all aspects of the system at any time. One of the major obstacles in updating the audio design was placement of new flagpoles to host some of the distributed system. The speakers needed to be raised to enable a more even distribution of sound between the front and back rows. "It was a bit of an engineering hurdle, but the results sound terrific," Nunnally remarks. The Community speakers were the right choice for the job. They've got the power to cut through the ambient noise and deliver intelligibility to the crowd." The new flagpoles above the North and South end zones were custom built to handle the additional weight of the loudspeakers along with a custom lowering device created by Light Lowering Systems, Inc. These devices securely retain the Community R-2 speakers and allow them to be lowered to the top of the seating area via a crank device when required. In addition, a total of ten "gallows poles" were assembled and installed for the East and West upper grandstands. These mounts allow the loudspeakers to be positioned and aimed properly for seating coverage. They can be repositioned for service by removing a large pin and rotating the pole to a position over the catwalk. Both these gallows poles and the lowering devices mean that any speaker can be serviced without complex scaffolding or other costly structure. The biggest hurdle to overcome with the system renovation was the need to provide sound quality and speech intelligibility to the stadium seating while minimizing spill over to the surrounding neighborhood. "The distributed system designed by Kevin Day of WJHW does an excellent job of providing coverage to the seating while keeping most of the energy in the stadium bowl where it needs to be in this location", explains John Fuqua, Director of All Pro Sound. "The immediate neighborhood around Boston College is very close to the stadium and we took care to minimize spillage by the aiming of the speakers around the perimeter. This included Gate address speakers that provide pre and post game announcement reinforcement outside the gate areas. Our team worked hand in hand with College staff to put the sound where they wanted it". In addition to the Alumni Stadium system renovations, All Pro Sound also completed upgrades to adjacent Conte Forum Arena as well as both baseball and softball fields. The upgrades to Conte Forum included the addition of Community R.25 speakers in the concourse areas as well as moving the control booth to the same position as Alumni Stadium so that both systems can be controlled from a central mix position. The new public address systems for the baseball and softball fields include Community R-2 and R.5 loudspeakers with portable amplification and processing. A unique feature of these systems is the addition of a Shure wireless "hybrid" package that allows a wireless signal from the stadium audio system to be transmitted to receivers in each portable system and broadcast via the softball and baseball public address systems for pre-game or post -game announcements. This works great for all the tailgaters! The systems have worked flawlessly and have received gracious reviews from the Boston College fans.

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