The new Cintas Center, located on the campus of Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH, combines a conference center and other meeting/public spaces with a sparkling 10,250-seat arena and superb training facilities.

A perspective of the arena at Cintas Center on the campus of Xavier University.

ICB Audio & Video, also located in Cincinnati and headed by Ian Budd, just finished implementing a wide range of systems and custom engineering services for the venue, based upon an audio-visual design by Jack Schimizu of Veneklasen & Associates of Santa Monica, CA. The heart of the facility is the arena. First and foremost, it's the home court of the university's nationally recognized men's and women's college basketball teams. In addition, it hosts concerts, productions, conventions and other events.

However, the basketball application factored most heavily into the acoustical signature of the room, which in turn influenced the sound design. Specifically, the athletic department's desire for a very live environment led to a deliberate lack of acoustical treatment.

"A live environment adds to the excitement, maximizing the home-court advantage," says Mike Luley, project manager for ICB. "At the same time, it dictates a sound reinforcement system capable of providing vocal intelligibility and full-spectrum musicality that can cut above the high ambient noise, while maintaining very tight pattern control. And, you want uniform coverage at every seat, even at transition points between loudspeaker arrays."

Developing Arrays

EAW MQ Series modular arrays provide complete coverage to all seating at the arena.

The sound team performed extensive modeling in seeking an optimum solution, ultimately deciding on a distributed loudspeaker system made up of 10 arrays flown above the perimeter of the main floor, covering the vast majority of seating. Another cluster flown beneath the scoreboard offers coverage to the first few rows of seating. Veneklasen & Associates elected to utilize Eastern Acoustic Works MQ Series loudspeaker modules to comprise the arrays.

Another look at the array structures.

The 10 main arrays each include three MQ modules, flown in an arc. Depending upon the coverage requirements of a particular zone, arrays are made up of either MQ1366 (nominal 60 x 60 coverage pattern) or MQ1364 (nominal 60 x 40) mid-high modules, always accompanied by a single MQ1312 low-frequency module within the array structure. (The under-scoreboard array includes three modules, tightly packed and centered with the center module firing straight down.)

The MQ Series mid-high modules include a single horn-loaded 10-in cone with EAW's proprietary VA4 phase plug, as well as a 2-in exit/75mm voice coil compression driver on constant directivity horn. The MQ13412 LF module houses triple 12-in. woofers. All MQ enclosures offer complementary dimensions and trapezoid angles to facilitate the creation of optimized-coverage arrays. Rigging systems currently available allow users up to 10 degrees of overlap between the mid/high enclosures.

The building structure required only five main trusses, which complicated the process of finding optimal array placement points. "Some of the optimal positions determined in the modeling process weren't available when it came time for flying and rigging," Luley explains. "Fortunately we have a very good relationship with Stagehands Local No. 5, and they worked side by side with us on ways to attain optimal flypoints with maximum safety."

Once the arrays were 'roughed' into place, lasers were utilized to fine-tune coverage angles. The 10 main arrays were then time-aligned with the scoreboard array serving as the point of origin. After preliminary equalization and time alignment, Luley set up final parametric equalization for each cluster via the system's Peavey MediaMatrix DSP, routing and matrixing unit, residing in the control room on the upper level, overlooking the floor. Final tuning and analysis, in addition to final time alignment, were done with the help of SIA Smaart Pro.

"We were a bit anxious about clarity at the seams of each coverage zone, but these concerns were eliminated once we got to the final tuning process," he says. "In essence, there are no seams."