Father Ryan High School has been a paragon of Nashville education for nearly a
century and currently serves a standing enrolment of nearly 900 students. Loyalty
to Father Ryan and its sports teams (flying under the banner of “The Irish’) is
fierce, and the school raised funds to build a sizable field house a few years ago.
Although the facilities are great, the sound system for the 2,300-seat gymnasium
lacked intelligibility and musical impact. Consequently, Father Ryan had to rent a
sound system for graduations and other large events, and it had to make do with
the less-than-ideal system for sporting events. Now, thanks to local A/V firm Linton
Audio Unlimited, Father Ryan has an excellent sound system based around an Ashly
Audio ne24.24M Protea™ matrix processor, three Ashly nX-Series amplifiers, and an
Ashly MX-206 analogue mixer.

Four bi-amped Worx Audio X2 loudspeakers provide complete coverage of the
stands and the floor, with a Worx Audio TL118SS 18-inch subwoofer to round out
the low end. Together, two four-channel Ashly nX 3.04 amplifiers that deliver
3000W per channel power the four bi-amped loudspeakers, and a two-channel Ashly
nX 3.02 amplifier handles the subwoofer. “I wanted to give every component plenty
of power,’ Laux said. “The cable runs are especially long, so I knew I had to get as
much power at the front end as possible.’

An Ashly ne24.24M Protea matrix processor handles all of the loudspeaker and
subwoofer conditioning, as well as all the necessary matrix routing, level
adjustments, and delay to properly tune the system for any given type of event.
Users control input volumes and output volumes from an intuitive Ashly MX-206
analogue microphone/line-level stereo mixer. Together with two wireless
microphones, strategically located jacks provide wired microphone input. Additional
existing music sources and a jack on the front of the MX-206 give Father Ryan High
School plenty of options.

“We’ve gotten great reports from the school officials,’ said Laux. “The president
went to an event and said the intelligibility and impact far exceeded anyone’s
expectations. No matter where they are in the room and no matter how they orient
the system, everyone can hear every detail… from just four loudspeakers. We set
up the delays and levelling so that listeners always locate the sound at the stage or
wherever the action is – you hardly notice the other loudspeakers even though
they’re doing a lot of work. In addition, the response is full-frequency hi-fi, and one
of the board of directors was so taken by it that he wanted to bring music in to
hang out and listen.’