The RBC Centre is home to the Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League and the North Carolina State University men's basketball team. The arena seats 19,722 for basketball and 18,680 for hockey, including 75 luxury suites and 2,000 club seats. The arena also hosts numerous other events, ranging from WWE contests to rock concerts.
According to Jim Devenney, senior audio designer, for Clair Brothers, the audio system at the RBC Centre was due for an overhaul. "The system originally installed in the building had lots of clusters and lots of overlap that degraded the system's intelligibility," he said. "The system was also underpowered for the events the arena was used for, particularly the Hurricanes and NC State basketball. The goals of the new system were to alleviate those problems and to give the customer the ability to zone the system for different event seating situations."
For this combination of power and flexibility, Clair Brothers installed a system that consisted of eight arrays each containing 10 VLA901 loudspeakers hanging from the centre of the roof, along with two arrays each containing four VLA601 loudspeakers for basketball floor-fills. Additionally, four arrays each containing six VT4880A arrayable subwoofers provide additional low-frequency support. Five AM6212 loudspeakers were installed in the scoreboard for center floor/ice fill, while 24 AM4212 loudspeakers were installed for very upper seat delay-fill.
"The coverage of the arena with the eight VLA arrays is excellent and the VT4880A subwoofers give the system an extra dynamic and fullness quality," Devenney said. "The two VLA601 clusters do an excellent job of filling in the floor from the basketball court to the hockey dashers at the ends of the arena."
(Jim Evans)
