Home to the Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) men’s and women’s basketball and track teams, the Murphy Center recently commissioned a new Martin Audio WPS line array system, following a gestation period of several years. The contract was won by Nashville-based Spectrum Sound Inc.
The arena’s outdated PA system had reached the end of its service life after years of makeshift fixes, with Spectrum Sound tasked with designing a replacement. Key goals included consistent coverage, high speech intelligibility and full-range music reproduction across the 11,520-seat venue. With the space also hosting conferences, graduations, and community events, versatility was essential.
Spectrum Sound’s team chose Martin Audio’s Wavefront Precision series, with its advanced control and optimisation capabilities, as suited to the reverberant acoustic of a basketball court – and the further difficulty presented by reflective glass walls. WPS and WPM arrays were chosen following a compelling on-site demo by Martin Audio Director of Strategic Projects, Brad Stephens. Operations Manager Zach Mitchell and Project Manager Rod Hester saw the installation through to completion, with assistance from Martin Audio Product & Application Support Manager, Joe Lima. Lima also assisted the Spectrum team with the design of a 360° subwoofer array.
‘A major factor in choosing Martin Audio was its optimisation technology,’ Mitchell says. ‘We needed precise coverage only where it was needed. We worked closely with Joe throughout the process, taking his concept and making sure it was properly implemented, all while keeping the client’s goals front and centre.’
The old system was removed and custom rigging and steels for the new PA installed. ‘Utilising a mixture of array sizes, along with FlexPoint FP15s as court fills and CDD12s as a delay ring behind the scoreboards, we were able to get consistent coverage in every seat,’ Mitchell explains.
The configuration was six WPS arrays in the round and the 360° sub bass array comprising four clusters of four SXCF118 cardioid subs flown in the centre of the arena.
‘This was a rare opportunity in an arena that didn’t have a centre scoreboard, but rather two giant LED walls on the ends,’ Lima says. ‘This allowed us the full real estate of the grid for sub placement.’
The team started working on various configurations with different boxes in Martin Audio’s Display 3 prediction software, until they landed on the SXCF118. ‘This fulfilled all requirements while staying under the grid’s load limits,’ Lima says. ‘We knew we didn’t have to steer energy away from the bottom, as they were also required to fill the court for the players, so line length wasn’t a concern, and 16 boxes – four hangs of four boxes on different axes – hit the SPL we needed.’
But Lima sensed they were in unchartered waters using cardioid subs: ‘We tried different approaches in Display 3 – playing with distance, aim and delay times – and ended up with a variation of the array where the subs are aiming sideways, instead of inwards, and are a bit spiralled off centre, with a slight upwards delay.
‘With this configuration we gained 2dB over the traditional TM [in the round] layout, and it gave us a ±2dB variance in the octave around 50Hz, in the entire seating area of the arena with the court being 6dB down. It’s probably the most coherent and consistent subwoofer system I’ve ever experienced.’
Completing the complement of loudspeakers are an 24 WPMs (12 per side) deployed in a portable fashion, for graduations and special events, augmenting WPS with courtside coverage.
Other complexities included setting the Hard Avoid values, since the raked seating is retractable. Thus, to ensure optimum direction of energy in all configurations Spectrum deployed a custom Q-Sys solution programmed by Max Kelley to recall system presets based on the needs of each event. All DSP meanwhile is contained in the combination of Martin Audio iK42 and iK81 process controlled amplifiers, which drive the main system in one-box resolution. In addition to the PA, Spectrum Sound provided a full acoustic treatment package, installed an advanced network and fibre infrastructure, and oversaw a console upgrade.
‘This is the largest project we’ve completed with Martin Audio and the difference in the room is night and day,’ says Mitchell. ‘The system is very flexible and translates all sources accurately.’
Ron Malone, Assistant VP Business & Finance at MTSU gave his thanks to Spectrum Sound for their ‘incredible assistance’ during the installation phase: ‘The Martin Wavefront Precision system has performed precisely as advertised. ‘Its capability to control and direct the acoustical energy, both where we determine it is needed, and at the same time where we do not want audio, met our primary goal of this project. It provides better zone control to accommodate various configurations for floor coverage during event games, and floor/bowl coverage during Convocation with a stage.
‘We could not be happier with our selection, and we know that we could not have done this without the great folks at Spectum Sounds Inc.’