Nicknamed The Creole City, Caguas in the east-central region of Puerto Rico shares its passion for baseball with rest of the country. Having undergone numerous prior renovations, the local Estadio Yldefonso Sola Morales has recently installed artificial turf, and upgraded its lighting, seating and restrooms – and now its sound system.
The field was inaugurated in 1947, and has been the field of the Criollos de Caguas – a professional baseball team named after Senator Yldefonso Solá Morales – since. To invigorate the crowd experience, the venue has looked to amplification from LEA Professional installed by the AVL Group.
‘There were no specifications to meet; they simply wanted a system that didn’t sound like the existing system, that was loud enough to cover the audience area, that could handle the narrators and background music, and create a more hyped sporting environment,’ says AVL Group Alexander Vice President, Alexander Rojas. ‘We felt that LEA amplifiers could easily do all of that.’
AVL Group’s team installed nine Connect Series 1504 amplifiers to power the 54 EAW MK Series loudspeakers installed throughout the stadium. The IoT-enabled 4-channel CS1504 provides 1.5kWchannel, supports Hi-Z (70V or 100V) and Lo-Z selectable by channel, and features Smart Power Bridge technology. A Connect Series 704 amplifier, a 4-channel amplifier with 700W/channel, was chosen for the loudspeakers in the corridors, suites and restrooms. Connect Series amplifiers also feature 96kHz DSP, a standard in all models, offering a range of benefits that significantly enhance audio performance and system versatility.
AVL Group’s technical team used LEA SharkWare software to configure a base profile and push it out to all the pre-staged 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 and the status and performance of individual channels. In addition, the software gives users the ability to view and adjust channel settings such as input settings, signal generator, crossover, equaliser, limiter and load monitoring.
With LEA Cloud, system integrators like AVL Group 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.
The city uses the stadium regularly for baseball and other sporting events, and the staff is very excited about the improvements that the audio system has provided to the stadium’s environment. ‘The new sound system really gets the crowd going,’ Rojas reports. ‘The built-in speaker tunings in the LEA amps were great for this application, as was the remote monitoring. We already have a few LEA projects planned and expect to have many more in the future.’