Maple Heights High School Athletic Center Raises Fan Experience With Electro-Voice

• Maple Heights High School, located in Maple Heights, Ohio, recently renovated its athletic center and installed a new Dynacord-powered Electro-Voice sound reinforcement system.
• Cleveland, Ohio-based NPi Audio Visual Solutions provided the design and installation of the new system.

Burnsville, MN, December 2024 — Maple Heights High School, located in Maple Heights, Ohio, unveiled its newly renovated athletic center last fall. The center is home to Maple Heights basketball, track, volleyball, and wrestling teams. The building underwent a series of upgrades, including installing a new Electro-Voice sound reinforcement system powered by Dynacord amplifiers. NPi Audio Visual Solutions, based in Cleveland, designed and installed the new system.

“We had a working relationship with the school from when they hosted the state wrestling tournament,” explains Sam Avellone, Director of Sales for NPI Audio Visual Solution. “The existing system had poor vocal intelligibility, so we came in with a portable Electro-Voice system that solved the problem at the time. Including someone to operate the system for them was another win for us. So, when it was time to solve the intelligibility issue permanently, they came to us.”

The athletic center is a large brick building with multiple windows and a 72-foot dome ceiling. To meet the space's intelligibility challenges, NPi collaborated with industry veterans Jason Potts and Bill Bowes, whose expertise in acoustically complex environments was instrumental in designing a solution powered by Electro-Voice and Dynacord. The goal was to keep the sound off the walls and ceiling and on the fans and the main floor. The NPi team rose to the challenge.

“The original center cluster system was unable to control the sound,” Avellone adds. “We did an EASE plot and determined that a zoned system with independent control would provide them with the flexibility the center required. Sports and school events held in that space had vastly different audio needs. A distributed system of Electro-Voice’s point-source loudspeakers was the best solution.”

Avellone and his team ultimately created seven zones. Six zones cover the home and away bleachers, with the seventh zone covering the floor. The distributed system consists of eight EVH-1152D/96 loudspeakers for lower bleacher coverage, six EVH-1122D/126 to blanket the upper bleachers, and six EVH-1552D/99 for main floor coverage. Four EVF-2151D dual 15-inch subwoofers provide the low end required to keep the fans and players engaged.

Electro-Voice EVH arrayable point-source, horn-loaded loudspeakers control coverage down to 500 Hz, necessary when reverberation time (T60) exceeds 2-2.5 seconds midband, ultimately directing more sound at the audience and less on reflective surfaces. The result is increased vocal intelligibility and musical clarity, which was a win for Maple Heights Athletic Center. In addition, the EVH line has size coverage patterns, which made designing a zoned system that much easier.

Avellone specified three Dynacord IPX10:8 multi-channel amplifiers to power the distributed system. An additional IPX10:4 powers the sub-woofers. The amplifiers are rack-mounted in a control room located off the main floor.

“The school was extremely impressed with the result,” concludes Avellone. “They no longer had to deal with all the issues the old system presented daily. We even provided a portable operator's rack to take to the scorer’s table so the announcer could control the microphone, two wireless utility mics, and music. Everyone is amazed with the sound quality and flexibility of the system.”