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A perspective of Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium at ECU, which received a mid-season system renovation employing LEA Professional amplifiers.

LEA Professional Implemented In “On The Fly” System Upgrade At East Carolina University

Mid-season project to revive failing system at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, home of the ECU Pirates college football team, employs 704D Dante Connect Series power amplifiers.

A sound system upgrade that was necessary during the recent college football season at 50,000-capacity Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium on the campus of East Carolina University (ECU) in Greenville, NC saw the commercial installation team at PC Sound (also based in North Carolina) implement Connect Series power amplifiers from LEA Professional.

James Braddy (CTS) of PC Sound received a call on a Monday in September ​​from ECU associate athletics director Greg Pierce regarding several audio issues that had occurred during the previous weekend’s home game. “At the time, half the sound system didn’t sound like it was working,” Pierce says. “I knew we needed a solution and we needed it yesterday.”

Specifically, attendees and players had complained that they couldn’t hear, and that the system would cut in and out. According to Braddy, 60 percent of the system’s legacy amplifiers were off and the other ones were going into thermal protection mode.

“I’ve always been able to get amps from LEA Professional through their rep Mavric and they are my go-to provider,” Braddy notes, referring to ongoing supply chain issues. “We put the order in on a Tuesday at 7 pm and within four minutes I had a reply from Scott Robbins, the VP of sales, with different options. The amplifiers were delivered to us on that Thursday and on Friday we did the install, ready for the weekend’s game.

Specifically, the PC Sound team deployed eight 704D Dante Connect Series amplifiers on the project. “One of my favorite things about these amplifiers is just the speed of setup,” Braddy says. “Being able to push a button and connect to it with my phone or iPad tablet, without downloading an app or registering an account is fantastic.

“The new amps, combined with a new mixer we added, ensured the stadium sounded much cleaner and clearer than it had ever sounded before, even though we were still dealing with some blown speakers at the time. These amps have built-in DSP processing and tons of flexibility with the ability to double the power on one channel without having to compromise on losing a channel. Not only that, they look and sound great.”

PC Sound utilizes the LEA Professional Web UI browser-based interface for local monitoring of every amplifier connected to the network from any phone, tablet, or PC. In addition, it allows users to view the status of every channel on any given amp.

This alongside the remote control LEA Cloud platform, ensures the integrator is in full control of the system at all times. PC Sound is considering adding this remote monitoring service as an additional feature to their service contracts. Further, currently the system runs on analog connections but the plan in the immediate future is to switch it over to a Dante audio network.

About the system upgrade, Pierce concludes, “It was everything we needed and some. I couldn’t have asked for better and we’re just so grateful to have a superior sound system in the stadium for our players and fans alike.”

LEA Professional
PC Sound

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Linea Research is a leading designer and manufacturer of high performance power amplifiers and DSP controllers for the entertainment, live sound, installed sound and commercial sound markets.