Five years ago, as a significant part of a massive $50 million upgrade and ‘evolution,’ America West wanted to replace its fourth audio system with something entirely new in terms of concept and design, a system finally capable of delivering ‘performance level’ audio for the frequent musical sequences during Phoenix Suns and Arizona Rattlers games … plus over 200 events a year.

When the arena’s technical staff approached Jim Jorgensen of Genesis Audio Systems, a leading audio integrator in Phoenix, they had problems to solve. Jim was asked, “Why can we have concerts in here, and it sounds fine, but we go back to sporting events and we have uneven coverage with transitions from one piece of music to another that are virtually indistinguishable, with lots of noise? There’s no definition to the PA, it gets loud but it doesn’t sound right!”

Having successfully completed the audio upgrade on the Pavilion and Paseo background systems outside of the arena, Jorgensen was ready to start on a legacy system that was compatible in terms of design and components. Genesis had already used Martin Audio’s new W8LM Mini Line arrays to distribute the sound through a large, diffuse architectural area with reflective surfaces such as glass and concrete to where the people were.

As Jorgensen explains, “The W8LM helped achieve that with its focused pattern, ease of rigging, and its delivered ‘musical’ quality. It wasn’t just a speech reinforcement system.

“So Rob Hofkamp went back to the Martin Audio design team headed by Peter Child and they came back with a proposal that resulted in ±3 dB from the worst seat in the house to the best seat in the house! 3dB in level, 3dB in coverage. We went back to the drawing board and came up with a new proposal within America West’s budget.”

Looking at a ten-year forecast comparing the cost of maintaining the existing system with its rigging and de-rigging needs added up to more than purchasing a new system that wouldn’t require the labour to rig and de-rig.
According to Genesis, this could be done using independently hung clusters, which they could hang from the high steel.

As described by Jorgensen, the system consisted of “eight clusters, with each cluster having different speaker combinations. The four main clusters all have W8LC Compacts, and there are two clusters with four WLX Subs and eight W8LM Minis, and two clusters with eight W8LX Subs and two W8LM Minis. We originally designed it with four clusters of W8LCs hung exactly dead centre in the room.

“But we ran into some design challenges with the scoreboard in the centre of the room. The speakers and the scoreboard couldn’t be in the same place for obvious reasons. The original design worked off a 22ft concentric circle for speakers. The scoreboard is 32ft in diameter, so we ‘exploded the orange,’ as we call it, and expanded it out to 33ft, which didn’t quite clear the scoreboard. Then we took it out to 36ft, which cleared the scoreboard but were told that the building couldn’t structurally support rigging at 36ft. As it turned out, we wound up at 44ft. We had to use fill speakers to compensate for the added distances.”

Thus the biggest design challenge was going from ±3dB to every seat in the house to the potential coverage issues of exploding it out to 44ft off-centre. “This is where we really began to appreciate Martin Audio big time,” continued Jim. “They offer a lifting bar designed to accommodate a single-motor hang, and this single point lifting bar allowed us to create a downward angle of 10º, which tipped the array to face down so that the bottom cabinet is almost pointed straight down at the ground.”
Asked about the audio quality, Jorgensen quickly counters, “The audio results exceeded the client’s expectations. This system brings the word fidelity back to arena sound.”

The Martin Audio system also represented substantial cost savings for America West. A multi-purpose venue or destination of this kind needs a sound system for all kinds of events, not just centre-point in the round seating for basketball games. The arena will also host March of Dimes fund-raisers, with 20 inflatable floats and 500 kids and parents, which would normally require a local PA costing anything from $2500 to $5000.

Genesis sold America West on the fact that, with this system, they would be able to de-rig two of those clusters in the centre of the room and re-hang them at the end of the bowl to cover the floor, allowing two people to re-hang the PA they already owned for use in multipurpose events.

A Crown IQ wireless network with a graphic interface (Lake Contour system with laptop-controllable zone-configuring for the arena to allow control of the PA from the floor, a value-added feature). Any production manager for a major music act going into America West Arena can feel confident that the house system can act as his speakers for that night.

As described by Will Lewis of installers Peacock/Jorgensen/ Lewis, the installation had to be quick: “Once we had all the gear in, we had a two-week window to get it up and going before they started playing basketball games. Then there were last minute adjustments in terms of where the speaker hangs were going to be as it relates to the structural engineer and the hang points that actually worked.

“We chose the Martin Audio line arrays because they offered intelligibility, clarity and performance level in terms of dynamic capability. You could hear the old system, but it didn’t knock your socks off like today’s audio systems need to do. And the line array added a level of consistency, horizontally, that was much better than the existing system.

“That, plus the other aspect of being able to get sheer horsepower in the arena — keeping it off reflective surfaces and aimed at the audience — were other important factors, along with the flexible set-up capability. With this, they can drop half the system to the floor — down to the half where the stage goes — then take it back up with a 24-box-a-side line array.

“The music reproduction really is exceptional now,” Lewis concluded. “These basketball teams have all kinds of intro music, dance performances and theme music, and most of these arenas were set up with public address systems, for the announcers. They have all kinds of events that require high fidelity and low end. Real rock and roll systems, which this is.”