We have been maintaining the Trail Memorial arena sound system for the last 15 years. We originally installed the sound system in 2004, and it was upgraded and added to in 2006. It consists of a number of Bose 502 speakers and two 502B subwoofers located over the ice and the spectator seats. At some point, another company came in and installed Soundtube speakers over the ice surface. Over the years, the tweeters gave out due to age and the changing temperatures in the arena, causing muffled sound over the ice surface.
In addition, several amplifiers had failed over the years, so we received the authorization to upgrade the ice speakers and to replace two of the original amplifiers with a new four channel amp.
We chose the Lea Connect 354 four channel amplifier with built in DSP to replace one of the original Crest amplifiers, as well as one more recently installed Crown that will be used as a spare unit in case of future failures. The single rack space four channel Lea amplifier puts out more power than a two space 2 channel Crest or Crown amplifier, plus the Lea has a power savings mode when not being used. The operating temperature will decrease in the rack as a result, resulting in longer amplifier life as well.
We installed four Community R.5 12” coaxial speakers in place of the Soundtube 8” speaker, each speaker covering ¼ of the ice surface.
Using the DSP processing power within the Lea amplifier, we fine tuned the new Community speakers for optimal performance over the ice surface.