BC Place Stadium sound system

[Cal Weldon]

Hi,

I am wondering if the sound modules use the 817 cabinet?

I'm also wondering what on earth those horns are. They are huge with an opening the size of the horn in the 817's and a driver the size of a woofer.

Any insight would be good, I'm not having much luck googling.

Cal

[LICORNE]

Hi

Concerning the BC stadium Each ring has 2 and some 8 ALTEC LANSING 817 cabinets with Altec Components.

Review:
Output and directivity Each of the 24 ring clusters are made up of Electro-Voice HP4020 large-format horns with DH1A compression drivers and two Altec Lansing 817s, dual-15 inch (381 mm) horn-loaded low-frequency loudspeakers. The 40x20 coverage pattern of the horns provided the desired higher output and increased directivity.

Loudspeaker clusters along the ends of the slightly oval-shaped stadium have three HP4020 horns. The top horn covers the top one-third of the upper seating deck, the middle horn covers the remainder of the upper seating deck as well as one-half of the lower deck, and the bottom horn covers the remaining lower-level seats. Clusters along the sides of the stadium have a fourth horn firing down and toward the field, providing foldback-type coverage for cheerleaders and others along the sidelines.

The larger main cluster features a hemispherical arrangement firing toward the long end of the stadium. It is made up of five HP4020 horns and two HP6040 horns in addition to eight of the 817 low-frequency loudspeakers. This cluster can be lowered via an electric winch to about 30 feet (9 m) above the floor. In this mode, it is perfectly suited for reinforcement of stage productions held directly beneath it. The cluster is raised during football games and other events.

[LICORNE]

A view of ALTEC LANSING STADIUM SET UPS IN THE 70's. This has nothing to do with the BC STADIUM wich was revamped in 1996.



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<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ October 27, 2007 03:54 PM: Message edited by: CONVERGENCE ]</font>

[Datubie]

Look at all those purty alnico 288's.

[Brek]

I wonder what the motor is for. Cooling fan?

[Datubie]

It is used to raise and lower the rig.

Originally posted by Brek:
I wonder what the motor is for. Cooling fan?

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[Todd W. White]

The Electro-Voice HP4020 and HP6040 and HP9040 horns had lousy directivity comapred to the Altec MANTARAY horns with the same published directivity patterns.

The MANTARAY horns actually DID have the pattern control that the EV's claimed to...and more!

[LICORNE]

Yes,

I agree Altec specs are superior and they have more experience in this type of horn than anny other company. Being absent from the market leaves
the door open for competition. The EV horn has a throw of 300 ft same as the Meyer dome displayed below with a total weight of 300 lbs.



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<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ October 27, 2007 04:03 PM: Message edited by: CONVERGENCE ]</font>

[hornysounds]

The old days of Western Sound. That system wasn't ever engineered right in the first place and a lot of people made a big buck hanging speakers where they looked good but sounded like **** . I know I was there durring construction . The sound in BC Place still is the worst of any stadium I've been in Canada,,by far. GM Place on the other hand was done better and used Bose drivers with special boxes and bass tubes to get better sound. I still think both are a modern day screw up and someone made off with a big buck and left the stadiums with **** for sound systems for sure. But,,as bad as they were they were miles ahead of the King Dome in Seattle,Wa. Maybe they should just give everyone headphones as the enter the stadiums ???,,,,,,,,,,,Ron

[Todd W. White]

When I did Razorback Stadium at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, I used 817's with 515-8GHP's and Mantaray's with 290's.

The original system had 210's with 203B's and 290D's.

Powered by 1950E's, the sound was INCREDIBLE! You could CLEARLY hear AND understand every word in EVERY seat, even when the crowd was really loud (and Razorback fans are REALLY loud!).

When they added the upper deck, I tried to get them to let me add to the score-board-mounted cluster, but they weren't willing to spend the money.

When the scoreboard was replaced years later, a friend of mine's company took the speakers down, rebuilt them, and re-assembled them in a VERY small chamber provided at the top of the new scoreboard. It sounds "ok", but not as good - the cluster had to be spread out horizontally, rather than stacked vertically like I had them, and it just didn't work as well.

It's my understanding that the Altec's have been replaced with "gee-whiz" stuff that works poorly...

That said, a centralized system for a large venue is difficult to design and install, and you HAVE to have hi-q devices, something none of the current manufacturers offer (even though they claim they can "throw" sound 300', that doesn't mean it arrives there at a level that's high enough and articulate enough to be heard and understood by the noisy crowd).