Mariucci Arena (Pt 2)

In Minnesota, where hockey rules, there's a tradition at both the pro and college levels of loud fan participation. It's believed that loud arenas help produce a home ice advantage, something the University of Minnesota didn't want to give up. "The old arena was a converted field house, which was really loud," says Scott Ellison, Mariucci's Program Manager. "We wanted to bring the same level of crowd noise across the street to the new arena."

Missing The Calls

The results were disastrous. After the first game, the university was criticized by the media for building a state-of-the-art facility in which you couldn't hear the game announcer. Fans couldn't understand why penalties had been called, and missed the announcer's background commentary about players.

Then Ellison talked to EMI, a Minneapolis Bose dealer, who brought in Phil Nelson, a Bose sound design engineer. Nelson suggested that the money earmarked for acoustic treatment could possibly be better spent. "There were problems with the acoustical treatment approach," says Nelson. "They would lose the loud crowd level and once the treatment was installed, they'd be able to hear their old sound system." Nelson said there was a way to improve sound quality, and speech intelligibility, while retaining the loud crowd levels.

Maintaining Excitement And Intelligibility

Using the Bose Modeler® design software, the design team worked out a careful solution for controlling the reflections of sound waves off of Mariucci's walls and ceilings. In large spaces such as arenas, sound waves travel long distances from their source (a loudspeaker or a shouting fan) until they bounce off surfaces, such as walls or the ceiling. In small rooms, like living rooms, reflected sound comes back so quickly that the ear doesn't distinguish it from the original sound - in fact, reflection adds to audio quality by creating rounder, warmer sound. In an arena, however, the sound takes long enough to reflect back that it may be distinguishable as an echo.

The Bose solution used four carefully positioned clusters of Panaray® LT (for Long Throw) 4402™ and 502®B speakers. The Panaray LT speaker projects sound in very narrow beams onto the audience. Outside the perimeter of each beam, acoustic energy falls off very quickly. This increases the amount of sound received directly by the listener's ear and keeps sound waves from reflecting off walls and other surfaces.

Defying Conventional Wisdom

We gave Ellison the opportunity to be one of the first to experience the Bose Auditioner® audio demonstrator, a technology that could create an image of the sound of the proposed system before installation in Mariucci. "It was amazing," recalls Ellison, "to sit in this hotel room and hear my arena. I heard it empty, half full, and with a full house. They even showed me what it would sound like in a particular seat."

In fact, the Bose team took Ellison on a complete tour of the arena, letting him hear sound in many different seats. "We were able to provide 75-80% of the seats with very high speech intelligibility," says Nelson, "while significantly improving intelligibility in the remainder. And at a price of just over half of what they would have spent on acoustical treatment." Ellison could hardly believe his ears.

The system was installed in less than six weeks. Working from midnight to 7 a.m., the EMI team managed to complete the installation on schedule without disrupting ongoing sports activities. The debut was a Friday night hockey game in early October 1994.

Achieving The Goal

At the opening of the game, the singer walked to the microphone and began doing the national anthem a cappella. "It was goose bumps all around," recalls Nelson, who was in the audience. "There wasn't a peep from the crowd. Her voice just glistened. The fans were absolutely mesmerized."

The following Monday morning, the university A/V expert who had argued most strongly that Mariucci's sound couldn't be improved without acoustical treatment, walked into Ellison's office and said, "I've got to hand it to you. You stuck your neck out and you were right. It worked." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back