Sound Solutions was awarded the sound system installation contract of the Beban Park arenas by the City of Nanaimo in July of 2019. The system design was done by Sam Scott of www.Chroma.fm Consulting, and we installed the sound systems over a 2 week period during the arena shutdown in August and September of 2019.
Wiring disaster – the original sound system rack
The larger of the two arenas, Frank Crane, seats about 2500 people, and is a full NHL size arena. Thanks in large part to the spray foam insulation on the ceiling of the arena, the acoustics were excellent, with a low reverberation time. This is why the distributed speaker approach worked very well in this arena, where in more reverberant arenas, a centre cluster system would have been the sound system of choice.
The existing sound system was a 20 year old analog TOA system, with 240 watt amplifiers driving a total of 9 all weather TOA speakers. While the system still worked, the speakers were aimed at somewhat random angles, resulting in poor intelligibility and sound coverage.
The new Frank Crane arena rack
We offered the City of Nanaimo the option of a touch screen and QSC Core 110f DSP system, which was approved by the consultant. We installed 24 Community R.35 speakers over the spectator seating. A combination of TOA, QSC and PowerSoft amplifiers powered the Community speakers throughout the arenas, and one 5.5” QSC touch screen controls the entire sound system in each arena. An existing Shure wireless mic was reused, as it was set to the new frequency set of 500Mhz, and will be good for a number of years to come.
Custom input plates were engraved for the scorekeeper’s boxes, the racks as well as the media gondola in the Frank Crane arena.
The overall sound quality was excellent, and the staff remarked how easy the system was to use, and noted the significant increase in sound quality.
The smaller Cliff McNabb arena used a similar basic rack, powering four Community R.5 and R.35 speakers, in a centre cluster, as there are no spectator seats in this arena. The old home-built speakers were removed from the ceiling, as they had fallen apart over the years, and the sound quality was poor. Two Bluetooth receivers in each arena give nearly 100% coverage, so that smartphones and tablets can be connected to each sound system.
Sound system wiring junction box with ‘snakeskin’ covering all of the individual wiring runs
We met with the consultant to commission the system at the beginning of September, and the work quality was approved with a minimum of deficiencies.
Existing speakers and sound system at the Cliff McNabb arena