The entire new AV installation operates under the general supervision of Bennie Ashford, Mississippi State's coordinator of sports television. On the quality of sound, he comments, "We love it. It's a huge difference from what we had before. We are now hearing true bass, along with exceptional clarity in the mids and highs. Having that ability to hear the full range of sounds, particularly for music, is something our fans truly appreciate."
Referred to by most faithful fans as the 'Dawg Pound', Davis Wade Stadium now boasts the newest of nine large-scale Meyer Sound sports venue systems designed and installed to date by Pro Sound, headquartered in Miami. Pro Sound engineer Dave Shoemaker, working in collaboration with Meyer Sound Design Services, used the MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction programme to plot uniform coverage and assure both intelligibility and music-capable bandwidth at every seat in the stadium.
The long sides of the venue are covered by twin arrays of eight Milo line array loudspeakers each, with a centre array of three Milo 60 narrow coverage loudspeakers targeting the far-end centre sections. Near-end seating is handled by one MSL-4 loudspeaker per side, while full-bodied bass kicks out of four 700-HP subwoofers. A pair of SB-1 parabolic long-throw sound beams project coherent mid/high energy to the far corners, providing astonishingly clear voice articulation at a distance of over 500ft.
(Jim Evans)
