University of South Carolina Upgrades Audio with EAW

At Williams Brice Stadium in
Columbia,
South Carolina, home of the
University of
South
Carolina’s Gamecocks football team, the stadium
was outfitted with a new sound system based on the EAW KF900 Series, featuring
EAW’s Phased PointSource Technology. The new sound system was designed and
installed by ACS Sound & Lighting, in
Columbia,
South Carolina.

The KF900 Series system at Williams Brice Stadium consists of ten KF920P
Mid-Frequency Loudspeakers, four KF910P Long-Throw High-Frequency Loudspeakers,
four custom KF914P High-Frequency Upfill Loudspeakers and two KF913 High-Frequency
Medium-Throw Downfill Loudspeakers, as well as a dozen EAW BH622 2×12 Bent Horn
Subwoofer and eight BH2312 3×12 Low-Frequency Loudspeaker enclosures. Seven EAW
UX8800 Digital Signal Processors manage the main PA system. In addition, four
KF755P Downfill Array Loudspeakers are used to fill in under the scoreboard, and
a pair of KF750P High Output Array Loudspeakers are attached to the rear of the
scoreboard and facing onto the stadium’s parking lot for general announcement
applications. All of the EAW KF900 Series speakers are fully weatherproofed.

“The KF900 Series is an amazing system design,” says Troy Gwin, general
manager of ACS Sound & Lighting. “Additionally, the EAW line is
incredibly comprehensive, and we were able to pull from the BH series
components to add additional low-end power in a very cost-effective manner for
the school.”

This new KF900 Series system is the successor to an EAW KF760 system that the
school had rented from ACS for the last two seasons. “After we brought in
that system in 2006 for a big SEC game, the school said they would never use
their old existing sound system again,” Gwin recalls. A year later, the BH
Series subs were added, making Williams Brice Stadium the only collegiate arena
to utilize subwoofers as part of its main sound system. “The intro music
for the team is the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and they really wanted the
sound to rumble,” says Gwin. “And it did.”

This year, the athletic staff at USC remains even more impressed with the KF900
system’s performance. Even Gwin was surprised when, during the initial tuning
of the system by KF Series designer Dave Gunness, he found himself thinking
that a particular piece of music he was hearing sounded pretty good. “Then
I realized, I was sitting 700 feet from the speakers, in the farthest reaches
of the stadium!” Gwin says. “To have music sound that good from that
far away is unheard of. You can pick out cymbal details and fret noise on a
bass guitar. Incredible. No other stadium system can sound that good so far
away.”