Citi Field in Flushing, Queens, the brand-new 42,000-seat home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets franchise, features a state-of-the-art distributed sound reinforcement system headed by more than 550 EAW MK and AX Series loudspeakers.
The system was installed by St. Charles, Missouri-based integrator TSI Global Companies, with design by consultants WJHW of Dallas. The result is a highly focused system that is consistent in quality of sound and intelligibility from the top row to the field boxes.
A key system element is a customized version of EAW’s full-range AX364-210 arrayable install loudspeaker, with its 60-degree x 40-degree horn modified to fire simultaneously forward, down, and to the rear. A pair of 10-inch woofers were also added to the cabinet, aimed downward to cancel low-frequency buildup in what is, essentially, an architectural bass trap. Three of these modified enclosures are installed at the clubhouse level, solving a coverage dilemma at one of the stadium’s most challenging spaces.
Other notable aspects include a large number of underbalcony speakers, with the entire system time-aligned vertically through the upper and middle-tier levels, a process helped with the use of Smaart optimization software. Smaller clusters made up of various combinations of EAW MK5396, MK5364 and MK2396 two-way full-range enclosures serve seats on the field’s main level and outfield seating sections.
“This was an immensely complex and challenging system, engineered to accommodate a sophisticated architectural design, and EAW products are at the core of the solution,” says Paul Murdick, Vice President of A/V for TSI Global. “The modifications that EAW were able to execute on their AX364 enclosure met the specifications laid out by WJHW to a ‘T.’
“As a result, those boxes are key to the overall consistency of the sound throughout the stadium, even in challenging locations. And the Smaart software made certain that the time alignments were precise and consistent from top to bottom. Thanks to EAW, there truly isn’t a bad seat in the house.”
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Photo File 1: EAW_CitiField1.JPG
