Kickoff! DSA Is A Big Hit At Home Of NFL Seahawks
“DSA is the total package. To attain anything close to the same result in performance would have been a lot more complicated and expensive, and it’s very questionable whether the quality of performance would even be close.”- Fred Micera, Audio Engineer, Qwest Field
Coming off a Super Bowl appearance last season, the Seattle Seahawks returned to the gridiron this weekend for the kickoff of the 2007 National Football League (NFL) season. The team’s home games are played at Qwest Field, which since it opened in 2002 is recognized as one of the premier stadiums in the league, featuring a venue-wide EAW loudspeaker line-up (in fact, it’s more than 98 percent EAW) under the direction of veteran Audio Engineer Fred Micera.
This past off-season, Micera was charged with formulating audio system designs for not one, not two, but seven Qwest Field club spaces that underwent renovation during this past off-season. All of these audio systems serve fan-critical areas, receiving the game-day radio broadcast in addition to a live feed of pre-game activities, team entrance to the field and national anthem, and all have one big thing in common: they’re headed by EAW DSA (Digitally Steerable Array) Series loudspeakers.
The three larger club spaces are each served by two sets of single DSA250 and DSA230 topped by a single EAW SB120 subwoofer. Meanwhile, the four smaller spaces are handled by a single DSA250, again topped by a SB120.
The biggest challenge presented by all of these spaces? Each is comprised of thousands of square feet of coverage area dominated by multiple reflective surfaces, many of them parallel. Further, the Qwest Field audio system electrical system was already quite close to full capacity, ruling out the addition of extra power amplifier channels. And, the physical structure of each club offers few options for mounting additional loudspeakers, and particularly high-output devices.
Micera (pictured above) overcame these challenges by specifying and deploying DSA loudspeakers after an introduction in the form of a recommendation and hands-on demonstration by Seattle Pro Audio, headed by Michael Gardner.
“The first attraction is the ability to both tightly focus coverage and also direct it under balconies is the first attraction,” Micera explains. “In addition, the ease of mounting of these systems is another big plus, and the actual mechanics of it are so simple and well-defined in the user’s manual, that it really simplifies and lessens the cost of installation.”
Each DSA loudspeaker is simply plugged into adjacent AC outlets, while the subwoofers are driven via existing spare power amplifier channels that were available.
Micera notes that the intelligibility of DSA is “astounding, so very, very clean,” even though they have yet to be equalized. During the demonstration process, with DSA’s brought in to be evaluated in a club space, even uneducated listeners could easily hear and understand the difference in truly focused coverage verses just bouncing sound around the reflective space. Further, this impact was realized with a “less than optimum” source of radio broadcast playback as opposed to full-range programming.
“The DSA Pilot software package is outstanding as well, very handy and intuitive,” Micera adds. “The integration of Smaart within this package is great, with the ability to overlay response filters within the Smaart platform a huge bonus.
“DSA is the total package,” he concludes. “To attain anything close to the same result in performance would have been a lot more complicated and expensive, and it’s very questionable whether the quality of performance would even be close.”