Dear Forum Members,
This week I completed a high school football stadium, approx. 2,500 seats. Prior to installation, the school installed a new press box and bleachers. Normally I like to use the press box for speaker mounting (or at least some) but they were insistent that nothing be installed on the press box. The lighting poles (225 feet apart) on the home side was my only mounting option.
With speakers 225 feet apart, time delay catches up with you. To counter this, I installed (2) Community R.35-3896's (one per pole) on an Adaptive arm and pointed them inwards to the home grandstand. This did the trick very nicely and allowed me to focus (4) Community R.5-96 MAX speakers (2 per pole) on the front side of the pole to cover the field, end zones and fire across to the visitor side.
I've installed many Community speakers before, but this was my first exposure to the R.35-3896 and the R.5 MAX. Let me say, I was more than impressed! (2) very demure 3896's powered by an Ashly KLR-2000, easily covers the home grandstand. They are mounted within 20 feet of the stands - but easily cover 100 feet each to blanket the 200 foot bleachers in sound. As impressive as they were, the R.5-MAX is in a
whole other league! WOW these things are just downright powerful! Each pair of R.5-MAX's are powered with a KLR-3200 and even with the dbx DSP limiter set at a very conservative 0 db (2 db overshoot) - these things easily fire across the field, and cut over the crowd noise and cheerleaders on opening night Friday. The school will save thousands of dollars just on graduation night alone by forgoing production rental.
As I walked the stadium tweaking things here and there, I was pleasantly surprised how many people were commenting on the clarity "I can finally hear the game" exclaimed someone. Another person said the game was finally enjoyable now that she could hear.
All in all, color me very impressed by these Community R.35-3896 and R.5-MAX.
P.S. Video taken from the visitor bleachers, approx. 240 feet from the speakers, while the school administration had their first listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOlS11ebrng&feature=youtu.beThanks,
Scott Hibbard