That's what Chris Chavanu of Electronic Contracting Company (ECCO) in Lincoln, Nebraska discovered when he set out to find the best match for the sound system requirements of Lincoln's new 15,147-seat Pinnacle Bank Arena, the new home of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers men's and women's basketball teams.
Based on specifications developed under the direction of Kevin Day at Dallas AV consultancy Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams, the arena's request for proposals (RFP) favored an integrated single-vendor solution. When the proposals were evaluated, the final selection for the arena's PA was an Electro-Voice line array system featuring the compact three-way XLD281 element. In addition to the sound system, security and access equipment from EV's parent company Bosch was also installed.
"Ten years ago there wasn't much integration available for large arena systems, but these days we know that the technology is available," says Chavanu, who oversaw ECCO's design-assist and installation responsibilities on the project. "So when we issued the RFP for a line array system with satellite speakers, we wanted everything from one source, not just the loudspeakers but also digital signal processing, power amplifiers and amplifier monitoring. That gives us a single company to deal with for communication, integration, support and service."
The RFP process allowed for a half-dozen of the industry's leading PA brands to submit proposals. "Most of them were eliminated from consideration," Chavanu says, "because there were only two that were really able to meet the design guidelines completely by delivering a fully integrated system." In the end the Electro-Voice proposal carried the day, which was particularly fitting because the company has a local manufacturing and service presence right in Lincoln. Lin Buck of Electro-Voice sales, along with technical support engineers such as Stu Schatz, George Georgallis and Chris Aelits, worked closely with ECCO and WJHW to shepherd the installation from design to successful completion.
The core of the WJHW-designed system is six XLD281 arrays of eight elements each, flown around the central scoreboard. The XLD281's 120-degree coverage pattern allows the short sides of the room to each be covered with a single array facing straight out. The four remaining arrays are each flown at a corner, angled such that the long sides of the room are each covered by a pair of arrays. "The XLDs do a great job of providing coverage at long distances," Chavanu says. "They've got the high directivity, high output and high intelligibility that we need. There is certainly more performance and value in the XLDs compared to similar-sized models from other brands."
Power for the arrays is provided by a dozen Tour Grade series TG5 2,000 watt-per-channel amplifiers "The Tour Grade amps are among the best-performing amps in our industry," Chavanu says. "They are incredibly stable, very high output, very high efficiency and they sound amazing."
(Jim Evans)
