The Miami Heat's director of broadcast services, David Vickery, explained their decision to purchase an Eclipse, "In fact we already had an Sy48 that we were looking to upgrade with new cards and so on, but then we visited InfoComm and saw the new Eclipse. Kevin Madden gave us a demo, and after that, there was no going back."
The console is used for corporate events held at the AA Arena, but its primary function is to handle all of the audio during the Miami Heat games including all of the performance elements pre- and post-game, and of course at half-time and during time-outs. "An American NBA basketball game is a big production," said Vickery. "It really was time for an upgrade to keep in step with our newly refurbished and outfitted video control room, which is state-of-the-art HD. Now that the Eclipse is in place, we can say the same of our digital audio control room too."
Jorge Arronte, arena sound & matrix manager, added, "The signal path is entirely digital throughout, and the audio performance of the board is excellent. I'm also really pleased with the FX card - having all of those extra EQs is great. In fact, we have actually eliminated a lot of outboard gear as a result, including a whole load of processers that were dedicated exclusively to the basket mics. Now everything just comes straight into the Eclipse where we have all the processing we need, and more. It keeps things clean and simple, it sounds good, and suddenly we have a lot more space in the control room."
(Jim Evans)
