The 2020 Camping World Maui Invitational, a college basketball tournament recently held at the Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, NC amidst the pandemic where no spectators were allowed, partnered with d&b audiotechnik to use its Fanblock system, powered by Autograph Stadium Sound, to recreate the sonic atmosphere of the Lahaina Civic Center in Maui, the tournament’s usual venue.

Fanblock utilizes d&b system components positioned within an arena that’s fed multi-channel combined with Autograph’s playback software to generate the crowd noise. Viewers at home were also able to experience the sounds of the stadium while games were broadcast live.

The basic audio content consists of non-team specific sounds, including background “bed” loops to provide a continual atmosphere within the stadium and a library of sound cues that can be triggered by operators in reaction to the action. The sound design package offers club-specific cheers made possible through Autograph’s content partner, FanChants.

d&b Fanblock uses the matrix functions of the DS100 Signal engine to distribute audio to the loudspeaker system. As the backbone of d&b Soundscape, the DS100 Signal engine enables further enhancement of Fanblock through its En-Scene software, allowing complex sound events to move dynamically around the venue in real-time and add additional subtlety and detail to the effect of Autograph Stadium Sound in response to the actions on the field.

This approach allows the sound engineer to have spectator chants grow from one section before building out to fill the entire stadium. The En-Space software option further adds to Fanblock by allowing the audience sounds to emulate larger venues, which helps facilitate more realistic experiences.
The system is scalable and and is designed to be utilized in any size stadium, arena and ballpark.