Located on 12 acres in the Link Valley community of southwest Houston,
Emery/Weiner School is an independent Jewish day school serving grades 6 through
12. Its campus offers many impressive features, including state-of-the-art science
and computer labs, art and music studios, a proscenium theatre, and a new, full-
length football field, Caress Stadium. It’s a high-quality school all the way, and the
administration wanted its new football field equipped with a sound system to match.
To make it so, Facilities Manager Terry Nelson called on Houston design consultants
touch thirty three, Inc (“t33”) to design and install a sound system based on
DanteTM – enabled Symetrix Radius DSP. “We were asked to bid on another design
that we considered entirely ineffective,” begins t33 principal Bruce Coffman, “so we
quickly rewrote the spec with the client.” Nelson worked together with t33 to help
install Coffman’s design.
One of the biggest concerns was sound leakage into the surrounding community.
“The scoreboard is on the far side of the football field, and it abuts a fence with a
street and some apartments behind it,” notes Coffman. “At either end, 22 feet
beyond the end zones, are some really nice condos. It was of the utmost
importance to do everything possible to minimize ‘sonic intrusion’ into the condos.”
Accomplishing this required a DSP that could support a customized loudspeaker and
a user-friendly control surface. “The DSP also needed to manage an assisted
listening system in the stadium, a stereo playback system in the weight room, 70V
transmission throughout the facility, and control of the system with panels and
wireless devices,” adds Coffman. “The Radius was the obvious choice to handle it all
while allowing us to provide easy-to-use controls.”
Remarkably, t33 specified a single loudspeaker to cover the entire field and seating
area. “It’s a single Fulcrum Acoustic AH463, driven with Powersoft amplification and
mounted atop the scoreboard, and it has a very tightly defined coverage pattern,”
Coffman avers. “You can walk from the edge of the bleachers to the end zone, and
past the end zone, the sound just goes away. The equipment was truly a perfect
match for the intended application.” Owners of the nearby condos could relax.
The system is compatible with Symetrix’ ARC-3 universal-mount control panel,
which provides control of basic audio functions, such as volume, source selection,
and pre-set recalls, using a capacitive touch interface with LED highlighting for
instant operational feedback. Symetrix’ ARC-WEB delivers the desired wireless
control of volume, mute, source selection, and other sound-system parameters
from iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.
To top it off, t33 installed a Mystery Electronics EasyMix EM12 DSP control surface,
equipped with motorized faders and backlit LED button switches to provide level-
fader functions, customizable control functions, and automation.
The results have been gratifying, as confirmed by Nelson: “The system has far
surpassed everyone’s expectations. It’s a very high-quality system, and everybody
is really happy.”
