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GADSDEN, ALABAMA: Gadsden City High School, northeast Alabama's newest class 6A high school, opened in June 2006.
The $30+ million dollar project has
290,000 square-feet under roof, sitting on a 53-acre gated campus. The
school offers more than 150 courses, including many for advanced college
placement, an augmented foreign language department, a highly decorated fine
arts program, and comprehensive technical training. The facility has seventy
classrooms, three computer labs, five science labs, a high tech media
center, a broadcast studio, three music rehearsal studios, two gymnasiums,
and an 8,000-seat stadium.
In addition, the fine arts program was blessed with an 800-seat,
state-of-the-art auditorium that is abundantly capable of meeting the
department, and the school and community's many and varied needs. The school
hired dB Audio & Video, one of the South's premier AV contractors, to design
and install its flexible, yet rock-solid sound system, and to consult with
the architects regarding acoustics. Keith Armstrong, dB's Alabama system
advisor, centered the new system on a simple, but immensely powerful and
faithful Danley Sound Labs loudspeaker system.
The first thing Armstrong did was to persuade the architects to introduce
curves, angled soffet and more acoustically-forgiving materials to their
auditorium design. Said Armstrong, "Since I had been a choral student of his
many years ago, I new Paul Edmondson, Gadsden's performing arts director. I
knew what he was looking for. He wanted a musical-sounding system that would
be flexible enough to convey any type of music gracefully and simply. The
Danley Loudspeakers fit that requirement."
His design consists of an exploded mono speaker system composed of two
hard-packed Danley Sound Labs SH-50 full-range loudspeakers for mains and
two SH-100s placed 25 feet on either side for side fills. In addition, two
SH-100s hang inside the proscenium for stage wash and choir monitors. The Danley full-range loudspeakers benefit from Tom Danley's patent-pending,
synergy-horn technology, which ingeniously applies acoustical principles to overcome the myriad of shortcomings that have long been accepted as simply
unavoidable in the audio industry. Synergy-horn technology results in both a
ruler-flat, undistorted frequency response that is remarkably independent of
the loudspeaker's volume and phase coherent, well-defined pattern control.
"Pattern control was important," stated Armstrong. "Although we were able to
reconfigure the room somewhat, it still possessed parallel side walls. Other
loudspeakers claim to have tight pattern control, but once you go below
800Hz they're omni-directional. Not so with the Danleys. They maintain their
pattern control down to very low frequencies. Thus, we were able to keep
energy off the side walls and to avoid nasty flutter echoes."
A Danley Sound Labs TH-112 subwoofer extends the low frequency response of
the system to the mid 20Hz range and is suspended just above the center
SH-50s. As with the full-range loudspeakers, Danley Sound Labs subwoofers
again benefit from Tom Danley's rare insight, this time with patent-pending
tapped-horn technology. As a result, the low-end from a Danley subwoofer is
rich, smooth, and impossibly loud given each unit's relatively small size.
In addition to the main Danley system, a distributed audio system of Atlas
Sound FAP42T ceiling speakers was used in the foyer and both dressing rooms.
Yamaha P7000 and P3500 amplifiers power the main speaker system and a QSC
CX-404 four-channel amplifier powers the monitors and the distributed
speaker system. A Bi-Amp Audia SOLO digital signal processor provides all of
the signal processing to the system and a Bi-Amp Volume/Select 8 gives the
school the ability to run a simple audio system from the stage. A Yamaha
DM1000 digital console with 16 channels of external mic pre-amps gives the
school a total of 32 channels of audio.
In its first year, the new system saw heavy use. Gadsden High School hosted
all of the state's music competitions, including all of its choral and band
competitions. In addition, the Gadsden Symphony Orchestra and the Theater of
Gadsden used the facility for many of their concerts and events. In all,
sixty events benefited from the Danley-centered system in the span of just
nine months!
Tom Danley is one of the most innovative loudspeaker designers in the
industry today and is recognized worldwide as a pioneer for "outside the
box" thinking in professional audio technology. His legendary designs have
been utilized in projects ranging from ground zero bombing simulation, jet
engine active noise cancellation, and sonic boom generators to critical
listening mastering studios, high-end home theatre, and houses of worship
around the world.
Danley Sound Labs
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