America’s high school football is especially popular in the Sheldon Lake area of unincorporated Houston, where the CE King High School hosts its 2,000 students. School alumni, parents, neighbours and students make home games much-anticipated community events. As part of a multi-site construction effort, the Sheldon ISD has completed a 10,000-seat stadium to support the Panthers home games and a variety of other events.
For the stadium’s sound reinforcements needs, AVL integration firm Broadcast Works installed two Danley Jericho Horns, four TH118 subwoofers, and Danley DNA 20k4 Pro multichannel amplifiers. Huckabee & Associates, designed the audio and video systems, and Broadcast Works won the bid to install it.
‘The stadium is huge, which is noteworthy in itself,’ says Broadcast Works Houston Area Manager, Joe Yeargain. ‘The overall design is clean; there are no excessive architectural elements but plenty of thoughtful functional aspects that will make the stadium popular with fans. In addition to the Panther home games, Sheldon ISD Stadium will support regional playoff games and other events that require big seating capacities, like graduation ceremonies.’
The stadium is built around a mid-level concourse with concessions between substantial home and visitor seating to either side. Opposite the concourse is a multipurpose building that serves as a field house for both home team and visitors, as well as a banquet hall. The banquet hall has large glass bay windows that look out onto the field, and 75-inch touchscreen monitors give attendees a great view of the game.
The end zone near the multipurpose building hosts a huge scoreboard withfully-weatherproofed Danley boxes mounted to it – two J3-64 Jericho Horns give excellent coverage and abundant SPL; one for the home side and one for the visitors’. Their patterns merge at the centre of the field, and drop off strongly to avoid comb filtering. Although the Jericho Horns have strong bass response, Huckabee & Associates added four TH118 subwoofers. At four channels each, three DNA 20k4 Pro amplifiers provide 12 channels at 5kW each, and optional Dante inputs make the run from the Allen & Heath dLive console in the press box to the amplifiers easy. A BSS London DSP system manages audio to smaller systems, including in-ceiling speakers for concourses, suites and banquet hall.
‘The evolution in sound quality over the 30 years that I’ve been in this business is remarkable,’ Yeargain reflects. ‘Danley shipped the DNA 20k4 Pro amplifiers with DSP presets for the Jericho Horns and TH118 subwoofers pre-loaded. They sounded superb right out of the box and didn’t require any tuning at all. Speech clarity is excellent, and the musical quality is something to experience. With the subwoofers engaged, the client was astonished at the sub-bass energy across the entire field 400ft away. Practically speaking, my installation techs were really impressed with the rigging points and installation-friendly features of the Danley boxes.’
The video system begins with several high-end JVC cameras, two of which have Teradek Bolt wireless interface that allows the operators to move around the field for optimal positioning. The video signals arrive in the press box, where an SDI HD video matrix and router allows camera feeds to be sent anywhere, including multiple flat screen displays in concourses, lobbies and suites. A TriCaster system allows instant replays to bee aired throughout the facility, including on the giant video screen. The end zone screen also runs ads outside of game time for additional revenue. A weatherproof, air-conditioned terminal in the parking lot accepts and sends data over fibre, allowing OB trucks to tie into the system.
More: www.danleysoundlabs.com
