After carefully weighing the demands of the long, cross-stadium throw at Fenway Park—with the issues of protecting the centerfielders’ hearing and minimizing the impact of the large, reflective glass surface of the press boxes above home plate—it was decided that an EAW KF900 system was the only tool for the job.
WJHW Consulting of Texas was called in to assist in designing a whole new speaker cluster for the outfield. Jack Wrightson, a WJHW partner, recommended that the Red Sox contact EAW. “I told them that there was a local manufacturer with excellent product and a long history of successful ballpark installations,” commented Wrightson. “I knew that EAW would be willing to work with the Red Sox and that the resulting collaboration would result in significantly improved sound quality over the existing system.” Boston Light and Sound, a longtime EAW installation team, completed the final system installation and set up. As is often the case for projects in historical venues, speaker placements were extremely limited, as were installation and alignment time due to the construction demands for the Fenway Park’s new seating section. Consequently, to cover the main grandstand and field box seating areas, it was decided that the main system should be placed in an already existing position located at field level in the centerfield wall.
The KF900 system had the power to fill the park with concert-level sound and because of its Phased PointSource Technology, would allow EAW’s engineers to control the cluster’s pattern in order to minimize the problems resulting from the cluster’s field-level placement.
As installed, the centerfield main cluster comprises two KF910s and two KF913s for high-frequency elements, eight KF920s for mids and a 3×3 cluster of nine KF930s to supply the lows. To complete the system, three MQ and one MK Series loudspeakers were employed to cover the outfield and the stadium’s seating areas that could not be covered from the main cluster in its centerfield wall location. From positions on a tower in centerfield, one MQV2364 and one MQ2343 are used to cover the center and right-field seating areas, while another MQV2364 and an MK2194 cover the new seating. Four EAW MX8750 Close-Coupled Processors provide processing for the main cluster, as well as for the supplemental outfield systems. Final system commissioning utilized SIA SmaartLive to measure delay times for system alignment and to provide the frequency response data used during final tuning and voicing.
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