Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Tech Focus: Venue Sound, Part 1 - When Sports and Entertainment Intersect, It's Not Just About the Game

03/04/2024

Tech Focus: Venue Sound, Part 1 - When Sports and Entertainment Intersect, It's Not Just About the Game Audio quality has become a major factor in the fan experience By Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Wednesday, April 3, 2024 - 10:40 am

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

Sports teams and leagues are increasingly focused on the quality of the sound in their stadiums and arenas. They have to be, because everyone else is. Consumer complaints about the quality and volume of the sound have moved to the forefront of conversations about the overall in-venue experience. Across the world, concerns about acoustics drive concerns about the emotional connection that spectators can have with what takes place on the field or the stage, and stadiums and arenas increasingly have to present both sports and music.

The market for live sports-venue sound is roughly where concert sound was 20 years ago: a cohort of ticket buyers have significantly higher expectations of the experiences they're paying for. It's not just a game anymore: it's an afternoon and evening at a venue that will likely offer music, food, betting, and other entertainment elements and often cost several hundred dollars. The sound has to match the prices and expectations. That's garnering attention from sound-system vendors and giving venue operators more options.

PK Sound's Ralph Mastrangelo: Sports venues need to accommodate entertainment, both as separate events and combined.

Sports is an exciting market to be in, and that's why I'm putting so much effort into it, says Ralph Mastrangelo, director, North American sales, PK Sound, which has had success in music and other touring markets and has begun targeting the sports-venue sector. Sports venues need to accommodate entertainment, both as separate events and combined.

One area his company seeks to leverage is increased demand for high-impact music systems that can cover the field for warm-ups and practices. Some venues will use the installed sound system for that application, although that can be overkill, pumping loud music throughout a mostly empty venue. In some cases, teams have installed smaller PAs dedicated to that specific task or deploy portable PA systems. Mastrangelo notes that PK Sound's robotic-line-array technology can shift coverage areas by robotically moving the line-array components to change coverage patterns: We believe it's a more cost-effective solution for sports venues that need to use the field for different things.

Baseball Embraces the Bass Whereas the NBA and the NFL are known for the enhanced bass of contemporary music - the Super Bowl Halftime Show's latest five outings have been anchored almost completely by hip-hop and R&B artists, from Bad Bunny in 2020 to Usher this year - baseball still only dips its toes into the pool's deep-low end. Four years ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers installed 21 L-Acoustics SB28 subs in updating its sound system's right-field tower, with three more on the left-field side - a considerable amount of low-frequency energy (LFE) for a typical MLB ballpark.

A main consideration was to keep that LFE within the park to prevent noise complaints. The concern was heightened by the stadium's use of a point-source system design, which is more typical of college-football stadiums and is intended to throw sound very long distances. Noise issues can be a bigger problem for a ballpark, where half of a team's 162 games a year are played, than for an NFL stadium, which is used a dozen or so times a year.

The subwoofers are arranged in an endfire configuration, explains Derek O'Hara, director, planning and development, Los Angeles Dodgers. That provides some critical directionality to the low end, keeping it from escaping the stadium walls and keeping the impact on the seating.

Danley Sound's Mike Hedden: Sports is about entertainment - now more than ever.

Mike Hedden, president/CEO, Danley Sound, which is prominent in the college-football-stadium sound-system market, has been advocating for baseball to embrace the bass. He cites the system Danley installed last year in Lawrenceville, GA's Coolray Field, which includes an ample array of the company's THMINI15 subwoofers. They have transformed the ballpark's entertainment value, he notes, adding that that's especially important since the venue's home team, the Savannah Bananas, are baseball's equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters.

As important, Hedden adds, is that, as part of the Atlanta Braves' development system, the bass-enhanced ballpark introduces players to that kind of music environment. [Major League Baseball] still has a built-in bias against the low end, he says, acknowledging the subjectivity of that pronouncement. Baseball stadiums usually use distributed sound systems, which are fine, but they tend to lose gas below 100 Hz. That's the technical side of it. I also think there's a sense that that's not what baseball's about. But sports is about entertainment - now more than ever.

WJHW's Mark Graham: Bass is driving system design these days, but so is speech intelligibility. Our job is to make it all sound good.

WJHW Principal Mark Graham agrees and notes that, in recent years, the consulting firm been installing more subs in ballparks, including the Detroit Tigers' Comercia Park this season. Some of baseball's seeming reluctance to fully embrace bass has to do with its sense of historical legacy as America's pastime, as well as with an emphasis on announcer speech intelligibility that has tended to make music more an underscore than a focus at games.

On the other hand, he points out, arenas have used line-array systems since music touring made them common in the 1990s. And, as more concert performances take place
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/04/03/tech-focus-venue-sound-part-1-w...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

09/10/2026

Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026

September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026 New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

22/09/2026

Young Journalist Award 2026: Meet the Final 12

From Malaysia to Mexico and from DR Congo to Ukraine, this year's 12 finalists for the 2026 Thomson Foundation Young Journalist of the Year award tell extra...

22/09/2026

ESPN, Precision Lasers Light Up NHL Player Media Tour in Las Vegas

The annual preseason content-gathering event brought 36 NHL players to Las Vegas, where ESPN used 2.5 kilowatts of laser power and a motion-control camera syste...

22/09/2026

Neumann Introduces KK 104 A and KK 105 A Wireless Capsule Heads

Neumann has introduced the KK 104 A (cardioid) and KK 105 A (supercardioid) wireless capsule heads, succeeding the KK 204 and KK 205. The new capsules are compa...

22/09/2026

NFL and TMRW Sports Announce Pro Flag Showcase During Super Bowl LXI Week

The NFL and TMRW Sports have announced a new annual Pro Flag Showcase to be held during Super Bowl LXI week in Los Angeles. The event will feature top flag foot...

22/09/2026

Washington State University Unveils New Daktronics Video Board and Audio System at Gesa Field

Washington State University has unveiled a new end zone video display and audio ...

22/09/2026

SVG Sit-Down: Disney's Dave Johnson on ESPN's New 4K HDR Distribution Pipeline and What It Means for Super Bowl LXI and Beyond

Disney's SVP of Live Operations and Engineering details the technology behin...

22/09/2026

Cosm Promotes Mazen Alawar to SVP of Marketing, Alexis Scalice to VP of Cosm Studios

Cosm has announced two senior promotions. Mazen Alawar has been promoted to SVP,...

22/09/2026

Mississippi State University Extends Camera Relationship with KOKUSAI DENKI

Mississippi State University's University Television Center has purchased four KOKUSAI DENKI SK-UHD7000-S2 cameras since 2024, with plans to add two more, a...

22/09/2026

Net Insight Appoints Christine Kjellvard as Interim CFO

Net Insight has announced that Christine Kjellvard will assume the role of interim Chief Financial Officer on November 1, 2026. Kjellvard has previously held in...

22/09/2026

Net Insight Launches Zyntai TimeNode Access PTP Grandmaster for Edge Sites

Net Insight has announced Zyntai TimeNode Access, a compact PTP Grandmaster designed for distributed edge sites. The product carries secure, precise time across...

22/09/2026

The Weight Explores the High Cost of Freedom in the Depression Era

Sam Hazeldine, Austin Amelio, Padraic McKinley, Julia Jones, and Ethan Hawke attend the premiere of The Weight at The Ray Theatre on January 26, 2026, in Park...

22/09/2026

Avalanche Tones introduce Noise Suite

Second high-gain tone plug-in released Following on from their debut release, Chainsaw Suite, Avalanche Tones have announced the launch of their second plug...

22/09/2026

LW6 wireless headphones from Lewitt Audio

Uncompressed audio with below 6ms of latency Lewitt's have just introduced their first pair of headphones which, despite being aimed primarily at studio...

22/09/2026

Neumann launch the KK 104 A & KK 105 A

Two new capsule heads for Sennheiser wireless systems Neumann have announced the upcoming launch of the KK 104 A and KK 105 A, a pair of new premium condens...

22/09/2026

Apogee Plugins Are Moving to Plugin Alliance

Apogee Plugins Are Moving to Plugin Alliance We're excited to share an important update about the future of Apogee plugins. Apogee plugins are moving to Pl...

22/09/2026

SipRadius honored with a Technology And Engineering Emmy...

Parkland, Florida, US, September 22, 2026: SipRadius, widely recognized for making content processing and connectivity secure and seamless, has been honored wit...

22/09/2026

VanityFilter 3.1.5 adds project files and adjustable protection around lips, brows and ears

VanityFilter 3.1.5 adds project files and adjustable protection around lips, bro...

22/09/2026

Chile's TV+ Modernizes Broadcast Operations with Blackmagic Design

Chile's TV Modernizes Broadcast Operations with Blackmagic Design Brie Clayton September 22, 2026 0 Comments URSA Broadcast G2 brings versatility...

22/09/2026

OWC Shares Sneak Peek at Amazon Prime Big Deal Days Pricing

OWC Shares Sneak Peek at Amazon Prime Big Deal Days Pricing Brie Clayton September 22, 2026 0 Comments Image courtesy of Deposit Photos Business and ...

22/09/2026

Berklee's First Homecoming Block Party Brings Alumni Home for Global Music Festival

Berklee's First Homecoming Block Party Brings Alumni Home for Global Music F...

22/09/2026

New TVU Pocket Offers Broadcast Features In Phone-Sized Unit

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Operative Launches Unified Platform for Advertising and Broadcast Management

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Element Launches New TiVo-Powered Smart TVs in the U.S.

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

NOAA Taps Tomorrow.io for Improved U.S. Weather Forecasts

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Gray Media Promotes Tim Maloney to GM and Director of Sales at WBKO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Reports: Paramount Reaches Settlement with State AGs in Antitrust Suit

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

New Research Lays Out Streaming Services Best Defense Against Churn

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Sinclair Expands The National News Desk

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Paramount Settles Antitrust Lawsuit over WBD Merger

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

U.S. Broadband Industry Investment Hits $92.6 Billion

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Sky commissions Tupac murder trial documentary from Passion Pictures & Propagate Content

From Academy Award-winning Passion Pictures and BAFTA-winning director Marian Mo...

22/09/2026

Wi-Fi, phones and power lines: understanding EMF exposure

Whether it be from the sun or from our phones and other devices, we are all exposed to electromagnetic radiation in some shape or form. With the dramatic growth...

22/09/2026

Comscore's latest AI Intelligence Report Shows Competition Intensifying as Claude and Gemini Gain Ground on ChatGPT

Comscore's latest AI Intelligence Report Shows Competition Intensifying as C...

22/09/2026

The Factory-X Project Sets Standards for Data Sovereignty in Industry

The Factory-X Project Sets Standards for Data Sovereignty in Industry Arvato Systems Brings Digital Sovereignty to Industrial Practice Factory-X Successfully...

22/09/2026

Apple opens Apple Music Hall, a\u00A0state-of-the-art live music venue in London - PRESS RELEASE - Posted on 21 September 2026

LONDON Apple today announced the opening of Apple Music Hall, a brand-new state-...

22/09/2026

Young creativity across the island of Ireland takes centre stage as sixth RT This is Art! competition launches

RT , Creative Ireland and Shared Island Initiative ask young artists to respon...

22/09/2026

NVIDIA Isaac ROS 5.0 Advances Agentic, Open Source Robotics Development

To build and deploy sophisticated robotics applications that can perceive, reason and act in dynamic environments, developers need new physical AI models and to...

21/09/2026

Manifold Taps Ryhaan Williams for North America COO Post

Manifold Technologies, developer of software-defined, FPGA-accelerated infrastructure for live production, has named Ryhaan Williams as Chief Commercial Officer...

21/09/2026

SNS Wins IAMT Best Journal Article Award

Studio Network Solutions (SNS) has won Best Journal Article at the 2026 IAMT Impact Awards for What Video Editors Need When Everything Is Changing Around Them,...

21/09/2026

MLW Announces Streaming Deal with Tubi for Weekly FUSION Series

Major League Wrestling (MLW) has announced a streaming distribution agreement with Tubi for its weekly series MLW FUSION. Beginning September 17, new episodes w...

21/09/2026

Adam Smith Named Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer at Disney Entertainment

Disney Entertainment has announced that Adam Smith has been named Chairman, Direct-to-Consumer, with responsibility for Disney and Hulu including product, engi...

21/09/2026

United Airlines and DISH to Offer Live Football on Starlink-Enabled Seatback Screens

United Airlines and DISH have announced an agreement to bring live professional ...

21/09/2026

SES to Provide Satellite Distribution for JioStar Channels Across India

SES and JioStar have announced a multi-year agreement under which SES will provide satellite distribution services for JioStar's television channel portfoli...

21/09/2026

Detroit Red Wings Announce Detroit SportsNet Broadcast Details for 2026-27 Season

The Detroit Red Wings have announced details for their inaugural season on Detro...

21/09/2026

Manifold Technologies Appoints Ryhaan Williams as CCO for North America

Manifold Technologies has appointed Ryhaan Williams as Chief Commercial Officer for North America, effective October 1, 2026. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, Wi...

21/09/2026

DAZN Pick Up L.A. Kings DTC Streaming Rights; ABTV Will Continue as Local TV Home

Angels Broadcast Television (ABTV), the local television home of the Los Angeles...