The job would be large. In addition to rebuilding the field itself, the school had to replace the field's fatally damaged sound reinforcement system. Installed by Advance Sound of Farmingdale, New York, the new system centres on an Ashly ne24.24M modular processor and two Ashly ne8250 eight-channel amplifiers. Advance Sound installed a similar system at Long Beach Middle School prior to Hurricane Sandy, and that system weathered the fateful storm and remains functional to this day.
"Long Beach High School was very hard hit by Sandy," said Thomas DePace, chief operations officer at Advance Sound. "The wind, the sand, and the water turned what was once a grassy field into a swampland. The goal of this rebuilding effort was to prevent such loss to a future storm.
"We've had great success with the robustness of Ashly gear, so that was easy to specify. In addition, the school wanted to move to a more distributed system to avoid noise conflicts with neighbors that had been a source of some tension with the old end zone-fired system. We needed a lot of amplifier channels, and Ashly's two-rack space, eight-channel ne8250 filled that need perfectly."
Inputs to the system include a CD player, an iPod input, and a handful of wired and wireless microphones, all of which feed an Ashly ne24.24M modular processor outfitted with eight analogue inputs and 12 analogue outputs. Two Ashly ne8250 amplifiers deliver 16 250W channels to drive six bi-amped One Systems 212CIM loudspeakers and a collection of indoor loudspeakers for the press booth.
The 212CIMs are weatherproof, and Advance Sound was allowed to install each speaker on its own dedicated sound pole. Thus, coverage was not constrained by the locations of existing structures, and the SPL at the adjacent residences is significantly lower than with the previous system.
"With an eight-fader Ashly RD-8C remote control, the new system is also very easy and intuitive for the non-technical staff to operate," said DePace. "That's important because we're an hour away from the school, and troubleshooting on game day is not something we want to be engaged in. With the RD-8C, all they have to do is turn the fader up for the input they'd like to hear. That's as easy and repeatable as it gets."
(Jim Evans)
