Rick Price, assistant director of broadcast technology and services for the Magic and Amway Center comments, "This building is about sponsorship opportunities and fan experience. With our massive LED scoreboard, I knew we would be doing visually incredible things, but I wanted to be absolutely sure that we had audio that was equally impressive.
"We said early on that the most important thing we could put it in this building was an amazing sound system. It's the one thing you can't sell, but, if people walk away from an amazing visual experience where they had a bad audio experience, they won't be impressed. And it was always frustrating, because we would create this great content that the fans could see but they would never be able to hear it properly. Now we can offer our fans the complete experience, and that includes our fantastic video working hand-in-glove with superb sound from the Meyer system."
The massive Milo contingent covers most of the main bowl with six arrays of 11 cabinets each, while 24 flown M3D-Sub directional subwoofers with cardioid response patterns provide low end. Completing the system are 24 UPA-1P loudspeakers deployed as outerring delays, plus eight more UPA-1P loudspeakers hung under the dazzling, largest-in-the-league video display. A Galileo loudspeaker management system with five Galileo 616 processors handles drive and optimization; an RMS remote monitoring system keeps tab of performance and enables mouse-click reconfiguration for different events.
The Amway Center main audio system was designed by Pro Sound and Video (Florida and California) in collaboration with Meyer Sound Design Services. Integration and installation was by Pro Sound and Video with project management by David Shoemaker of the company's Orlando office.
"It's a true concert grade system," says Rod Sintow, CEO of Pro Sound and Video. "It's the best they could have put in there. It has incredible coverage everywhere, and cuts through everything. It rocks the walls."
(Jim Evans)
