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The Venue: |
The University of Minnesota's state-of-the-art hockey facility. |
The Challenge: |
To design a sound system that would deliver great speech intelligibility without the use of acoustical treatment. |
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The Solution: |
Bose® Panaray® LT system designed using Auditioner® technology. |
The Result: |
"Goose bumps all around" on opening night and fans that were "absolutely mesmerized" by the sound system. |
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Controlling Reverberations Without Minimizing Crowd Response |
| In Minnesota, where hockey rules, there's a tradition at both the pro and college levels of loud fan participation. It's believed that loud arenas help produce a home ice advantage, something the University of Minnesota didn't want to give up. "The old arena was a converted field house, which was really loud," says Scott Ellison, Mariucci's Program Manager. "We wanted to bring the same level of crowd noise across the street to the new arena." |
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In Minnesota, where hockey rules, there's a tradition at both the pro and college levels of loud fan participation. It's believed that loud arenas help produce a home ice advantage, something the University of Minnesota didn't want to give up. "The old arena was a converted field house, which was really loud," says Scott Ellison, Mariucci's Program Manager. "We wanted to bring the same level of crowd noise across the street to the new arena." |
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Missing The
Calls
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| The results were disastrous. After the first game, the university was criticized by the media for building a state-of-the-art facility in which you couldn't hear the game announcer. Fans couldn't understand why penalties had been called, and missed the announcer's background commentary about players. |
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Then Ellison talked to EMI, a Minneapolis Bose dealer, who brought in Phil Nelson, a Bose sound design engineer. Nelson suggested that the money earmarked for acoustic treatment could possibly be better spent. "There were problems with the acoustical treatment approach," says Nelson. "They would lose the loud crowd level and once the treatment was installed, they'd be able to hear their old sound system." Nelson said there was a way to improve sound quality, and speech intelligibility, while retaining the loud crowd levels. |
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