A new sound reinforcement system at Surprise Stadium in Arizona to support the transformation of the venue to serve not just as a Major League Baseball spring training facility for the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals but also to host corporate events, fundraisers and more is headed by Eastern Acoustic Works AC6 ADAPTive column loudspeakers in a project by audio specialist Ben Davis joined by Sound Image Integration.
Davis’ primary areas to tackle were the outfield and the main seating area in the 10,700-plus seat stadium that’s located in the city of Surprise in Maricopa County. “The main seating area was very linear,” he explains, “and the speakers in the outfield were throwing too far and splashing audio into the main grandstand, resulting in an echo. There were existing speakers hung on yolks from the canopy in a standard layout throughout the field, so there was a lot of opportunity to evolve the current technology. I looked at the ADAPTive technology from EAW and the AC6 ADAPTive column loudspeaker seemed to fit all our needs.”
The AC6s replace all of the existing outfield loudspeakers as phase one of the upgrade, with the focus of phase two to be modernizing passive components in the main seating area. There are also existing EAW boxes in the underhang from the original build that are still performing to expectations.
“Our goal was to put the sound where we needed it and keep it away from the areas we didn’t,” Davis says. “That’s where the pattern control of the AC6 really helped. We were able to direct the sound energy onto the seating area and the outfield to give them a much better tone. Compared to the older speaker — which was much more tuned for speech — the full range column of the AC6 provided a much more musical and smoother sound, and the coverage is a lot more even now.”
In addition, Davis notes that stadium will be able to now host a variety of events as they had hoped. “We added AC6 to the light poles on either side of the video board,” he concludes. “When they’re operating the stadium for baseball, AC6 provides coverage for the grass seating and keeps the sound off the main seating. When they want to do a movie night, they can change the focus to go towards the opposite side of the field where people will be sitting.”
