To manage the problem, Thurman contacted Tim Landry Sound Construction of nearby Mandeville, LA. "Mumford Stadium is a classic horseshoe shape," notes Tim Landry. "The scoreboard is at the open end and has to cover the entire stadium. That's a throw of over 400ft to the far end. The first speakers I thought of were the Turbosound Aspect line."
The university wanted a system that was both intelligible and musical, as the school is famed for the halftime shows of its high-energy marching band, known as The Human Jukebox. Working with the physical frame in which the old system was mounted, Landry designed a system consisting of 10 speakers, designed to cover the stadium in three zones.
For both mid and long throws, Landry specified the TA-880H. "Two of the TA-880s cover the far field, aimed straight out at the opposite end zone and covering out to about the far 20-yard lines," Landry explains. "For the mid throw, which basically covers between the 20s, we have another TA-880 splayed out to either side."
For the "near" seats on either side close to the scoreboard, Landry selected the Aspect TA-500. To cover the need for a big low end, four Turbosound TSW-218 subwoofers were mounted in the centre of the array. "They like a lot of bass, and we gave it to them. Those twin 18-inchers pack a lot of punch and have great definition," says Landry.
The system is powered by Crown amplifiers and controlled with an Ashly 24.24M processor. "To cover a 29,000-seat stadium from a single cluster, you've got to use DSP," ssays Landry. "If you lose your DSP, you're out of business. That's why we install two of them, programmed identically."
(Jim Evans)
