Western High School Finally Gets Heard With Community

Western High School in Davie, Florida boasts a stellar athletics department, with winning teams and a spacious, well equipped athletic complex. The school’s football stadium had only one minor — albeit glaring — flaw: it lacked a PA system.

“The stadium was built without consideration for a PA system,” says Gary Matthews of Total Audio Video Systems (TAVS), the Sunrise, FL, company behind the stadium’s new Community Professional audio system. As he explains, that lack of planning led to considerable challenges in designing a system for the stadium.

“There were no existing conduit runs from the press box on the home side to the visitors’ side of the field,” he says. “There were also numerous sidewalks, out buildings, and other underground utility conduits that would get in the way of any trenching required to provide for mounting loudspeakers on the visitors’ side.”

The solution was found in Community’s R-Series loudspeakers. The R2-52Z long-throw, two-way system was mounted on the press-box structure, effectively beaming the audio to the far side of the field. On the home side, a pair of R1 medium-throw two-way systems covered most of the seating, with a pair of R.25 compact 8-inch systems providing down fill on the outer edges of the upper-tier seating. The system is powered by Crest CKI Series amplifiers, with a Drive Rack 260 providing DSP.

“The school wanted the system for primarily athletic events, as well as safety assemblies, so it had to be versatile enough to clearly and intelligibly reproduce vocals but also sound good playing music during halftime and other events,” says Matthews. “They were emphatic about wanting full-range music performance that didn’t ‘sound like it was coming out of a coffee can.’ And the system needed to provide good coverage to both sides of the field.”

He reports that the client is excited about the new system. “They’ve got perfect audio anywhere on the grounds now,” he says. “It’s clear and robust on the home and visitor sides, whether they’re doing vocals or music.”