Burgess-Snow Field at Jacksonville State University, the 24,000-capacity home of the school’s NCAA Division I football team, was outfitted with a new sound system in 2016 designed and installed by Sound Solutions of Oxford, AL, but recently, the DSP unit that had provided multi-zone audio control for the luxury skyboxes failed.
“We initially thought we would repair the existing DSP,” relates Sound Solutions co-owner Joey Hutto. “But when we contacted the manufacturer, we learned that the product had been discontinued. Rather than attempt repairs, we switched to Symetrix, a line that we have used for years, so we’re very comfortable with it.”
Specifically, Hutto’s team replaced the old DSP with a Symetrix Radius DSP, which offers 128 (64 × 64) redundant Dante channels, onboard Ethernet and Dante network switches, and 12 x 8 analog I/O, expandable with an option card. “Programming the Radius with Symetrix’ Composer software was easy, and Symetrix was great about walking us through issues,” states Hutto. “The whole process was pretty painless.”
Each luxury skybox at Burgess-Snow Field has its own wall control, which is primarily used to set volume. “We decided to go with the new Symetrix ARC-3 wall panels, which can not only control volume and mute but preset selection and room combining — perhaps more than we needed in this case but it was the right choice,” Hutto explains.
The ARC-3 offers 32 menus of 32 items and offers capacitive touch control with LED highlighting. It can be mounted in-wall in a single-gang electrical box (U.S./UK/EU) or surface mounted with an included enclosure. ARC-3 wall panels connect to a Symetrix DSP using standard CAT5 or CAT6 cabling, making installation simple.
“The Symetrix Radius system is working great for JSU,” Hutto concludes. “It’s reliable, it’s easy to control with the ARC-3 panels, and the sound is clear and clean. The client is very happy. In fact, the university is building a $7 million baseball complex, and we are putting Symetrix DSPs in there as well.”
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