USA - Located in the heart of Central Florida, Lake-Sumter State College (LSSC) offers a supportive environment designed to help students succeed. As the fastest-growing college in Florida, serving 8,600 students annually and a 25:1 student-to-faculty ratio, LSSC is experiencing growing pains in its classrooms and campus facilities. The college recently upgraded the audio system in its multipurpose gymnasium by deploying amplifiers from LEA Professional.
The Everett A. Kelly Convocation Center is home to LSSC’s National Junior College Athletic Association volleyball programme. With seating for up to 1,100 spectators, the convocation centre also hosts local high school basketball games and tournaments. Outside of athletics, the facility can be transformed to hold events such as award ceremonies, banquets, and special events.
A key event each semester is Commencement, where hundreds of students and their families gather in this location to celebrate a significant milestone. Sound intelligibility was not adequate for many of the activities taking place in the gym, so staff reached out to Daniel Hunt, director of business development of JSC Systems, to design and deploy an AV system with better intelligibility.
“Like many gyms, LSSC’s had lengthy reverberation. The spoken word accompanying games and other activities sounded muffled at best, so we knew we had to implement a system with better directivity,” said Hunt. “The old system was also underpowered, and we knew a perfect way to correct that particular issue was to deploy amps from LEA.”
The system utilised Crestron DSPs – one courtside to interface with event mics and another in the sound booth rack. LED displays adorn the walls which also double as digital scoreboards. Danley Sound Labs subwoofers were flown in the centre of the gym, and multipurpose horns were mounted around the court. Hunt's teams also installed acoustic treatments to further reduce reverberation.
Hunt deployed several Connect Series 704 amplifiers to power the subwoofers and horns installed around the gymnasium. The IoT-enabled four-channel 704 provides 700W per channel, supports Hi-Z (70V or 100V) and Lo-Z selectable by channel, and features Smart Power Bridge technology. With three ways to connect, the school can engage the built-in Wi-Fi access point, connect to the centre’s Wi-Fi, or connect to the local area network via Cat 5 or Cat 6 cable.
“Taming the reverberation in a gym isn’t easy – the high ceilings, hard bleachers, and parquet floors combined with down-firing loudspeakers is a testament to JSC’s capabilities,” said Brian Pickowitz, VP of marketing for LEA Professional. “We’re very pleased to have played a role in elevating the audio experience at LSSC.”
