Located near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, Pomona College is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, CA. Due to their high directivity and speech intelligibility, beam steering arrays from Renkus-Heinz were deployed in the main sports venue, Voelkel Gymnasium.
College faculty and staff actively encourage students’ intellectual curiosity to help them discover their passions while making numerous resources available to support students’ emotional and physical well-being. The college’s 30-year-old recreation center no longer met the student body’s needs, so it embarked on a large-scale, $55 million project to revitalize and expand the center’s offerings.
[SCN Hall of Fame 2023: Harro Heinz]
Joseph Brennan, director of IT operations, turned to Darryl Lima, president of DJL, to design the audio system for the gym and supporting facilities. “Basketball courts and other sports facilities are very challenging acoustic environments,” said Lima. “The active, steerable line arrays were used to focus the sound in just the seating areas to minimize the acoustic aberrations of a sports court.”
Four ICLive X Series loudspeaker arrays were flown above the gym while four TA151 compact loudspeakers were used as down-firing court fills. Each array comprised one ICLLX module, two ICLX modules, and two ICLX-118S subwoofers. Designed from the ground up to be the most scalable sound system ever created, the ICLive X Series brings a new level of flexibility for integrators, contractors and production/rental houses to provide the best solution for any application. The ICLive X arrays are equipped with Renkus-Heinz’s exclusive Acoustic Source Multiplier (ASM) waveguide, allowing the high-frequency section to be coaxially mounted in front of the low-frequency section. The result is consistent and symmetrical delivery of high and low frequencies along the entire array length for superior audio reproduction.
The remodeled gym supports 21 NCAA teams and more than 1,800 intramural and 550 club athletes. The full-range frequency response, high-power output for music reproduction, and superior speech intelligibility of Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers made them a perfect choice for the sports venue. Additionally, Renkus-Heinz staff brought extensive experience to the design phase and the final system commissioning process to ensure an optimal outcome.
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“The building was very challenging. The sports associations brought new minimum height restrictions into play, so everything ended up being flown,” said Lima. “But the system has received great reviews. It’s very focused and extremely powerful, a rare combination.”
