A recent renovation of the three primary venues at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, AL, including the 10,000-seat Propst Arena that’s home to the Huntsville Havoc minor league hockey team in addition to hosting live performances, includes new sound reinforcement systems designed by Verta Technologies that are headed by ADAPTive loudspeakers from EAW.
ADAPTive components are also deployed in the Von Braun Center’s 1,300-capacity Mars Music Hall and 2,000-seat Mark C. Smith Concert Hall. “It’s impressive to see ADAPTive present in both smaller music halls and large-scale arenas, demonstrating its versatility across various venues,” says Christian Tuttle, principal and CEO of Verta Technologies, which is based in Huntsville. “The Von Braun Center now boasts one of the largest permanent installations of EAW ADAPTive under one roof in the world, showcasing the versatility of the technology across different venues on the campus.”
With a looming hockey season and a tight project completion timeline, Verta Technologies executed a rush project for the arena, receiving the purchase order in July and completing the installation with a week to spare before the first hockey game in mid-October.
After doing research, the Von Braun Center chose the ADAPTive loudspeakers for the arena, with Anya serving as the main loudspeakers to meet the venue’s specific asthetic as well as electro-acoustic requirements. The space offers a “hub-and-spoke” ceiling structure, where the primary load bearing beams meet in the center compared to the typical rectangular grid structure in most arenas.
Considering this, the installation included a range of hangs, with the shortest being three-boxes all the way up to seven-boxes – for a total of 12 clusters around the bowl. Each configuration leverages ADAPTive’s ability to expand horizontal coverage by adding another column to the array. Otto subwoofers are centrally located in the hub to supply horizontal coverage of the sub band, EAW QX 566 loudspeakers deliver coverage to the main floor, with all loudspeakers supported by a Q-SYS backbone for DSP and control.
Tuttle explains that the height of the space is a challenge for line array technologies: “From ice to steel is only 65-feet, so it’s not a high arena structure,” which would create a considerable obstacle for many of today’s articulated arrays. EAW ADAPTive arrays meet these needs with flying colors by being able to cover an expansive vertical geometry with very short arrays.
“Using EAW’s Resolution software, we were able to steer the audio precisely to the audience from the first row all the way to the back row, so that every seat sounds exactly the same, from a frequency standpoint,” he adds. “We could also expand the horizontal coverage from a single rigging location. A lot of people don’t realize how difficult it is to get smooth SPL throughout a space, and this is a huge range of multi-tiered seats. The EAW ADAPTive system ensures everyone in the venue gets the same experience.”
The Mars Music Hall and Mark C. Smith Concert Hall house both Anna and Anya systems as well as Otto subwoofers. Doug Collingsworth, design engineer and production manager at the Von Braun Center, who was integral to the project from the beginning, concludes, “It’s always satisfying when the naysayers leave with a smile on their face. The decision to go with EAW was an excellent one. The system sounds great.”
