Danley delivers for Passaic County campus

USA - Passaic County Technical Institute is a large vocational, public high school that serves over 3,300 students in northern New Jersey. Its sizable campus is well-appointed, and its programmes are well-supported. Two full-time professional sound technicians number among its staff and oversee operations in its performing arts department and at its sporting events. Until recently however, the PCTI Bulldogs football team played for 1,500-plus crowds using only a portable sound reinforcement system that was underpowered and frequently unintelligible.
JD Sound and Video of Voorhees, New Jersey, remedied that for the Bulldogs’ most recent season with the installation of Danley OS80 loudspeakers and OS115 subwoofers. Because they’re designed and built to be fully weatherised, the Danley OS-Series boxes will serve PCTI for a long time.
“The Passaic football stadium had the best of everything for a school its size: new lighting, new turf, a new climate-controlled press box, nice seating, and full concessions,” says Joe DiSabatino, president and lead design engineer at JD Sound and Video. “Everything except a great sound reinforcement system. They were limping along with an underpowered portable system for every game. But they had high expectations. Given everything else audio-related at the school and the two full-time, A1 sound techs on staff, Passaic was a critical audience. This was more than the usual ‘make the athletic director and the students happy’ situation.”
The final design uses three Danley OS80 Synergy Horn loudspeakers to cover the left, centre, and right portions of the stands (there is no visitor side seating). The centre OS80 is offset on the press box to allow a clear line of sight. Two Danley OS115 Tapped Horn subwoofers near the left and right OS80s provide low-frequency reinforcement - an additional octave to an octave and a half. Finally, two weatherized Danley GO2 8CX loudspeakers add fill just in front of the press box for the seats missed by the OS80s. QSC amplifiers and QSC Q-Sys control/DSP complete the system.
“The Danley boxes installed a lot easier than the other manufacturers we’re used to,” DiSabatino said. “Bolting a fifty-pound OS80 up on a 26ft extension ladder was a much less daunting task compared to a box with comparable output from a competitor’s product. They were also small enough to fit through the press box hatch, which was nice too. Even apart from the great Danley performance, the ease of installation will make Danley our go-to solution for similar jobs in the future.”
The first Friday night game of the season saw 2,500 Passaic fans cram into the stands and around the field, and everyone thrilled to hear the improvement in sound quality over the previous seasons’ portable system.
(Jim Evans)

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