LEA Professional scores in East Carolina
- Details
Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium is the on-campus football facility at East Carolina University for the East Carolina Pirates in Greenville, North Carolina. The stadium has a capacity of 50,000, making it the second largest college stadium in North Carolina.
James Braddy, certified technology specialist (CTS) at PC Sound, a local specialist in pro audio, video and lighting installations, got a call on a Monday in September from the associate athletics director at ECU, Greg Pierce who explained that the previous weekend’s home game had been overshadowed by a series of audio issues.
“At the time, half the sound system didn't sound like it was working,” says Pierce. “I knew we needed a solution and we needed it yesterday.”
On the weekend in question, stadium goers and players had complained that they couldn't hear, and the system would cut in and out. According to Braddy, 60% of the stadium’s legacy amplifiers were off and the other ones were going into thermal protection mode.
“I have always been able to get amps from LEA Professional through their rep Mavric and they are my go-to provider,” comments Braddy. “We put the order in on a Tuesday at 7pm and within four minutes I had a reply from Scott Robbins the VP of sales, with different options. The amplifiers were delivered to us on that Thursday and on Friday we did the install, ready for the weekend’s games.”
“One of my favourite things about these amplifiers is just the speed of setup”, said Braddy. “Being able to push a button and connect to it with my phone or iPad tablet, without downloading an app or registering an account is fantastic.”
The PC Sound team installed eight 704D Dante Connect Series amplifiers from LEA Professional.
“The new amps, combined with a new mixer we added, ensured the stadium sounded much cleaner and clearer than it had ever sounded before, even though we were still dealing with some blown speakers at the time,'' continues Braddy.
The following game sounded even better according to the team at PC Sound, and the stadium was ready for homecoming the following week, which included a performance by a live band.
In order to monitor the system, PC Sound utilizes the LEA Professional Web UI. The Web App UI is LEA Professional’s browser-based interface which allows local monitoring of every amplifier connected to the network from any phone, tablet, or PC.
Currently, the system at ECU runs on analogue connections, but the plan in the immediate future is to switch it over to a Dante audio network. This provides the stadium with another safety feature, if the Dante network goes down for any reason, it will automatically switch to analogue.
For Greg Pierce, the new system is exactly what they needed. “It was everything we needed and some. I couldn’t have asked for better and we’re just so grateful to have a superior sound system in the stadium for our players and fans alike.”
