Symetrix a Superior Solution for Texas Stadium
Shenandoah, TX December 2017 — When a bank spends $1 million to buy naming rights to a 10,000-seat high school football stadium, you know youre in Texas. High school football is a big-time sport in the land of Sam Houston, with many of the local stadia rivaling professional venues in capacity and technology. People here are loud and proud when it comes to their high school teams. So when the Conroe Independent School District (CISD), 40 miles north of Houston, needed a new sound system for Woodforest National Bank Stadium, its leaders called on system integrators they could rely on to understand: TASC A/V. Based in Conroe, the TASC team knew exactly what was required: very loud, yet clean and clear audio to serve a big, noisy, enthusiastic crowd, plus straightforward, simple system control. To manage the system, the TASC A/V team chose a Symetrix Radius 12x8 DSP.
This was the second large stadium weve done for the Conroe Independent School District, recounts TASCs Steven Spruell. A couple of years ago we put a similar system in Moorhead Stadium, which is in Conroe and seats 8,400. We used a pair of Symetrix Radius DSPs for that install.
Woodforests previous sound system was always underwhelming, Spruell continues. The system was underpowered, and its frequency range was poor. Were high school football fans, like everyone else around here, so we experienced it first hand. The new system needed not only power to be heard above the crowd but clarity. Another reason was that we wanted an all-Dante system, and the Radius has an excellent Dante implementation.
Symetrix Radius DSPs offer 128 (64x64) Dante channels for ultra-reliable multi-channel audio networking over IP. The analog I/O is scalable: A stock Radius 12x8 provides 12 switchable balanced mic or line-level inputs and 8 line-level outputs but for Woodforest Bank Stadium, TASC installed a Symetrix xOut 12 expansion card, adding 12 more line-level outputs, for a total of 20. Radius embedded web server displays I/O levels, diagnostics data, and hosts Symetrix ARC-WEB browser-based interface for smartphones, tablets, and computers.
To deliver the required power, the TASC A/V team mounted two Community R6-51 high-output, horn-loaded loudspeaker systems on custom-built towers in the south end zone, on either side of the Daktronics scoreboard. The speakers are driven by 14,000 watt Lab Gruppen power amplifiers. At the far end of the field, the speakers can still hit 96 to 97 dB, with plenty of headroom, asserts Spruell. Between the speakers power and the overall systems sound quality, fans have no problem hearing everything.
In addition to its Dante support and sound quality, Spruell appreciates the Symetrix processors ease of programming. Symetrix Composer software made it easy to program the Radius, he details. With Composer, we can design a complete end-to-end DSP signal path, including routing the Dante streams. That makes a big difference in projects such as this one.
Having installed two systems in CISD stadiums, both based on Symetrix DSPs, TASC can claim two of the most important sound system projects in the area. Both stadium systems have been a big success, confirms Spruell. We use a lot of Symetrix DSPs, and the new Woodforest National Bank Stadium system is a good example of why. It works great, sounds great, was easy to program, and is easy to controleverything we and the school district hoped for.
