The 5A-rated Coppell High School in northwest Dallas County, is the alma mater of top professional athletes, such as 2014 American League Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Corey Kluber of the Cleveland Indians and home to a new 2,600-seat performance arena to host indoor athletics and other events.
For the arena’s new sound system, Ron Stanley of systems integrator 32 Degree Audio chose Fulcrum Acoustic DX-series and CS-series loudspeakers for the new Coppell PA.
“The Coppell High School sound system was a mission-critical job for many reasons,” Stanley relates. “In addition to the need to deliver loud, clear sound, including music as well as speech, the system has to deliver bell tones and emergency announcements. So it has to be absolutely reliable and intelligible everywhere in the space. Anywhere I need a super-premium speaker that sounds great and is totally reliable, I use Fulcrum Acoustic loudspeakers.”
Why Fulcrum Acoustic? To Stanley, the reasons are obvious. “The quality is excellent: In addition to delivering high-quality sound, I have never had a Fulcrum Acoustic speaker fail,” he states. “And Fulcrum’s customer support all but guarantees that the system will sound good with no guesswork. For instance, Fulcrum did the acoustical modeling for me on this project and recommended which speakers I should get. The speakers are made in the USA, so I can call the factory and talk to the engineers. That’s the level of support I need for a project of this caliber.”
For the main system, Stanley employed 14 Fulcrum DX1577 dual 15-inch coaxial loudspeakers, suspended from the ceiling and configured as a distributed ring. Three Fulcrum CX1277 12-inch coaxial loudspeakers hang over the basketball and volleyball court, pointing straight down to cover the court area.
“I wanted to use point-source speakers rather than line arrays for this project because it would be easier to align the system and ensure everything is in phase,” Stanley explains. “With the DX1577s, the system is very present, intelligible, and loud everywhere in the space. We didn’t feel he need for subwoofers, either, which would have complicated placement and alignment, because DX1577s deliver plenty of low frequency response. Also, the Fulcrum Acoustic point source boxes weigh under 100 lbs., so we could hang them with 1/8-inch steel cable and didn’t have make any complicated bridles.”
Stanley’s design is flexible in several ways. “We used Crown DCi-series multi-channel amplifiers with one amp channel per speaker, and the DX1577s are biamped, so that really is one amp channel per element. Everything is tied into a BSS Soundweb London Blu-160 DSP, and I’ve done a lot of programming. The system is linked into the main school PA, as well. So we can individually tune each speaker, and the customer can turn certain speakers off, enable or defeat bell tones and announcements from the school PA, and so on.”
There’s a lot more to the system, including mic inputs at key positions, prewiring and programming to add foyer speakers in the future, and a Soundcraft digital mixer with Blu card for accessing the system via Ethernet.
But what matters most is that Coppell Cowboys and Cowgirls fans will hear music and announcements clearly and intelligibly.
“Louis Macias, director of facilities for Coppell ISD, brought us in on this project because we’ve worked with them before and he trusted us to get it done right,” Stanley proclaims. “The new arena is important to the community and to us, and my goal is to give the school district maximum value, with a system that does everything they want at a very high level. So I left nothing to chance. With Fulcrum Acoustic loudspeakers and the support Fulcrum provided, I had complete confidence that we’d achieve our goals.”