Although it's fair to say that almost all Iowans stand behind the Hawkeyes (there is no pro team in the state) it's also true that Iowans who are recovering in the hospital deserve peace and quiet, even on game day. When school officials became disenchanted with the lo-fi sound and poor coverage of Kinnick Stadium's old sound reinforcement system, they worried that elevating it to modern standards would only increase game day complaints from the hospital.
Those worries have been allayed. Kinnick Stadium's new high-powered Danley Sound Labs system - the first in the world to use the massive Caleb Horn - delivers reference-monitor-quality audio while keeping sound energy in the bowl. The new audio system provides Danley's famous pattern control, rich low-end, airy high-end, unrivalled speech intelligibility, and prevents appreciable spillover into the adjacent neighbourhood and hospital.
"As Hawkeye management and fans travelled to other stadiums, they kept hearing sound systems that were far better than the one they had at home," said Marvin Smejkal, owner of Sound Concepts (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), the company under retainer with the University for audio system maintenance and operation.
"As the complaints mounted, they asked us to research the sound systems in the five best stadiums they had heard. Three of the five were Danley systems, which resonated with my previous experiences involving Tom Danley's creations - I was a huge fan of his ServoDrive subwoofer back in the 1980s and 1990s. Based on previous experience and a very impressive blind comparison, we recommended a Danley system for Kinnick Stadium."
The design, installation, and commissioning was a collaborative effort by consultant Anthony James Partners (Richmond, Virginia), with input from Sound Concepts and Danley Sound Labs.
Although a range of Danley components - including Jericho Horns and BC-415 subwoofers - contribute to coverage of the entire bowl, the real hero in Iowa is Danley's new Caleb Horn. Measuring 10ft tall by four feet wide by five feet deep, the Caleb Horn delivers precision pattern control to extremely low frequencies and provides "seemingly magical coverage" of the opposite stands - and little else - at Kinnick Stadium. It is a single, massive horn with 108 drivers (12 x 18-inch drivers, 32 x 6-inch mid-range drivers and 64 x one-inch high-frequency compression drivers, 40 x 15 degree coverage pattern) with a frequency response that extends down to 30Hz.
"Danley's Caleb Horn is a game changer," said Larry Lucas, director of audio engineering at Anthony James Partners. "Given the architecture of Kinnick Stadium, the Caleb's default 15 by 40 degree beam width was perfect to hit the far section, but Danley was willing to modify the horn exit to hit any target we required. Apart from the precision coverage, which extends to vastly lower frequencies than can be obtained with any other solution, the Caleb shares another Danley feature: clean, musical sound without comb filtering or other interference issues."
(Jim Evans)
