Spectrum Sound Inc., a design/build firm based in Nashville, Tenn., recently renovated the EAW 900 loudspeaker cluster in the University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Stadium, which has a seating capacity of 67,600 and is home to the University’s Wildcats football team. The company tuned the new system using a Lectrosonics TM400 wireless system for test and measurement.
“Commonwealth Stadium is a very large venue with massive seating capacity,” says Ken DeBelius (pictured), sales manager for Spectrum Sound’s installed sound division. “Once the equipment installation was completed, we needed to tune the system and were dreading the prospect of having to run mic cables everywhere in order to take our measurements. We knew there had to be a better, more manageable solution to this issue, and we found it with the Lectrosonics TM400.”
The TM400 is designed to provide a link between calibrated test microphones and measurement equipment such as SIM, SIA SMAART Live, TEF or other systems. It employs Lectrosonics’ Digital Hybrid Wireless technology, which uses a proprietary algorithm to encode digital audio information into an analog format that can be transmitted in a robust manner over an analog FM wireless link. The system’s compander is said to offer a dynamic range that results in greater system accuracy when tuning a sound reinforcement system.
“The day we tuned the Commonwealth Stadium system,” says DeBelius, “it was raining, and there was simply no way we were going to drag 500 feet or more of microphone cable through the bleachers to tune the sound system. With the TM400, we had the freedom to walk the venue without having to worry about whether or not we had enough cable to get the job done, or dragging those cables around all types of obstacles. Running all those cables to tune a system can be a real hassle, and the TM400 resolves all of that; this is a real plug-and-play solution. After making a few connections and adjusting the levels, the TM400 worked perfectly. With the Digital Hybrid Wireless technology, we knew we could trust the linearity of the measurements. For anyone involved in system tuning, I highly recommend it.”
For more information, visit www.lectrosonics.com and www.spectrumsound.net.
