“There is no place in the venue where you won’t be able to clearly hear all the play announcements and calls by the officials — which unfortunately was not the case with our old system,” says Todd Argust, vice president of operations for the Detroit Lions. “It also will be a valuable tool for getting our fans pumped up at critical points in the game.”
Using the same loudspeaker components as touring concert bands such as Metallica, the LEO Family system possesses the wide dynamic range required to deliver clean, uncompressed and undistorted sound even during bursts of peak ambient crowd noise. Because the voice characteristics remain clear and natural, intelligibility remains high without sounding annoyingly loud. Extended dynamic range also enables greater flexibility in programming music and effects for climactic moments as sound doesn’t have to be heavily compressed to prevent system overload.
Todd Argust is pleased that the optimum audio solution for Ford Field came from a company that is American-owned and still manufactures all products in the USA. “Having a system made in America was important symbolically,” he says, “but it was even more important logistically. Because of our accelerated construction schedule, we needed a vendor that could respond quickly and have the system ready on time with zero performance compromises. We found that with Meyer Sound.”
The main bowl system is anchored by a distributed ring of eight LEO Family line arrays, with a total of exactly 100 LEO-M and LYON-M self-powered, full-range loudspeakers covering the majority of seating areas. Augmenting the main arrays are scoreboard delay arrays and corner fill arrays with an additional total of 36 LEOPARD compact linear loudspeakers. Bass power is propelled through 24 1100-LFC low-frequency control units, here deployed as cardioid arrays to provide directional control and maintain tight response for convincing impact both in the bowl and — when a special preset is selected — also on the playing field.
A separately addressable system of 18 LEOPARD loudspeakers blankets the playing field with high-level sound. The entire system is controlled by eleven Galileo GALAXY networked processors and monitored via Meyer Sound’s RMS networked monitoring system.
Outside the main seating bowl of the stadium, in the acoustically problematic atriums at gates A and G, audio is delivered by Meyer Sound CAL column array loudspeakers with advanced beam steering technology. Bass is supplied by two 500-HP subwoofers. The CAL systems provide exceptional intelligibility in these challenging areas.