The Weslaco Independent School District in the southern tip of Texas built Panther Stadium in 1990 and later renamed it Bobby Lackey Stadium after the 1950s-era Texas Longhorns quarterback.
For the 13,400-seat stadium, the school district recently hired A/V integration firm Hermes Music (Pharr, Texas) to design and install a new sound reinforcement system built around loudspeakers from Danley Sound Labs.
The new system features two Danley J3-94 Jericho Horns, two Danley BC-218 subwoofers, and three Danley DNA 20k4 Pro multi-channel, DSP-enabled amplifiers.
“They take football very seriously in Weslaco,” says Ed Zamorano, director of educational/governmental sales at Hermes Music. “All of the Weslaco Panther home games begin with an hour of pregame interviews and discussion – like an ESPN type production – that are shown on the scoreboard and amplified through the sound reinforcement system. The games wrap up with another thirty minutes of postgame interviews and discussion.”
Weslaco arrived at its new Danley system through an unusual mix of demos, recommendations, and system failures.
“The school was planning a new scoreboard, but they already knew that they didn’t want the stock sound system that would come with that scoreboard,” explains Zamorano. “They had already heard it at another area school and felt it was too weak. Because they were in discussions with us and because we were recommending Danley Jericho Horns, the school sent its audio techs to a demo we arranged with Danley’s help at another area football field. The techs loved it and recommended a Danley system for Bobby Lackey Stadium. We also used Danley Direct modeling software to demonstrate the coverage we could get with just two Danley Jericho Horns.”
While all that was happening with the expectation that a new sound system would go in when the new scoreboard went in, Bobby Lackey Stadium experienced a catastrophic sound system failure, right in the middle of the football season. Since there were still home games to be played, an area track meet and the East-West All-Star football game to host, Hermes Music leapt into action and installed the new Danley system in advance of the new scoreboard.
Two Danley J3-94 Jericho Horns affixed to either side of the existing scoreboard cover the home and visitor sides, and two directional Danley BC-218 subwoofers vertically stacked beneath the scoreboard fill out the low end. A new Midas m32r digital console serves as the user interface and sends signal to three Danley DNA 20k4 Pro amplifiers via Dante. Each DNA 20k4 Pro has four 5000-watt amplifier channels, allowing two units to drive the two Jericho Horns (each Jericho Horn requires four amplifier channels). The third amplifier powers the BC subwoofers.
The Danley DNA 20k4 Pro amplifiers also include DSP capabilities and presets for all of Danley’s loudspeakers and subwoofers. Hermes Audio technicians were able to simply load those presets as a starting points for system tuning.
In addition, their Dante capability made wiring the system easier. “I’ve dealt with many Dante implementations from many different manufacturers,” says Zamorano. “At Bobby Lackey Stadium, I burned three days getting other components to network properly, but the Danley gear was all straightforward and worked as expected. I had the Danley amps networked and working perfectly inside half a day. We used Danley’s DSP presets too, and they were darn near perfect right out of the gate.”
