The football stadium at Severn School in Maryland (between Baltimore and Annapolis), a prep school for the U.S. Naval Academy, now has a permanent sound reinforcement system courtesy of Baltimore-based A/V contractor HP Electronics, which utilized Ashly Audio and Danley Sound Labs equipment as the primary components.
Specifically, HP Electronics designed and installed the system with an Ashly MX-206 six-channel microphone mixer, as well as an Ashly nXp 1.52 two-channel 1,500-watt network amplifier with built-in Protea DSP processing driving three Danley Sound Labs OS-80 fully-weatherized full-range loudspeakers.
With no press box or permanent building adjacent to the field, HP Electronics sales designer Joe Schwartz supplied Severn School a portable rack bag that connects to the permanent Danley OS-80s via a simple 5-pin connector.
Inside the rack, the Ashly MX-206 analog mixer provides a simple, intuitive way to control input volume for an Audio-Technica wireless microphone and a custom input panel for connecting MP3 playback devices and the like.
A Furman CN-1800S provides power conditioning and sequencing, and is used to trigger a Furman CN20P within the main rack inside the Athletic Center, allowing the entire system to be powered up from the outdoor mix position.
The Ashly nXp 1.52 provides abundant power and processing for the system in just two rack spaces. “I’ve always been a fan of Ashly products,” says Schwartz. “The MX-206 is simple to use, sounds great, and will serve Severn School a long, long time. The nXpÊ1.52 delivers a ton of power for the cost, and the optional built-in processing is very convenient and easy to use.”
Schwartz configured the three Danley OS-80s such that two cover the left and right sides of the bleachers and one covers the field from a crow’s nest above the bleachers.
“We’ve used Danley loudspeakers and subwoofers in a number of churches and auditoriums, and they sound great,” he snotes. “When we saw that Danley had come out with a fully-weatherized loudspeaker that was based on the same design that we had used in the churches, it seemed like an excellent way to go at Severn.
“The engineers at Danley even helped with the design based on a similar field they had done. The OS-80s were relatively lightweight and easy to install,” Schwartz concludes. “I was shocked that the single OS-80 was able to cover pretty much the entire field. And that coverage, like the coverage in the bleachers, is remarkably even. Overall, the system has great fidelity and coverage, and it came in at a very competitive price point.”