LONG ISLAND, NY — Opened in 2021, UBS Arena is a multi-purpose indoor arena located in Long Island, New York. Home to the NHL’s New York Islanders, UBS Arena has a capacity of 19,000 and hosts basketball games, concerts, corporate events and professional wrestling broadcasts in addition to Islanders’ home games. To provide world-class audio experiences for fans and attendees of a wide range of events, the newly constructed facility required a state-of-the-art arena audio solution.
“We’re the multifunction arena here on Long Island, hosting hockey, basketball, large concerts, corporate events and meetings, and we want to provide the top level experience for all those — whether it’s thousands of fans for a concert or a small group having a meeting here in one of our great spaces,” says Brian Jones, the facility’s AV systems engineer in charge.
The solution — designed by consultant group Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams, Inc. (WJHW) and installed by integrators Diversified — consists of over 950 JBL loudspeakers, including eight main bowl arrays of JBL VTX A12 speakers (96 total) and 32 S28 subwoofers; and a variety of PD Series, AWC Series, VRX Series speakers in balcony, concourse, back-of-house and delay positions. The entire system is powered by Crown I-Tech Series and DCi Series amplifiers, with network control / DSP provided by BSS Soundweb London devices.
“The ownership group were going for a level as good as Madison Square Garden,” says WJHW consultant Scott Bray. “I felt we went above and beyond that. The main array system is in stereo and as we have eight clusters, we were able to do a left/right configuration all the way around the scoreboard. And the delays are individually powered, so concerts can come in and tie into those delays and have a completely time-aligned system all the way back to their main end stage arrays.”
Bray added that “We specified the A12s for a variety of reasons. It met a size mark because with scoreboards getting bigger, taller and wider all the time, we had a limited amount of space to fit into in the rigging grid. The A12s met the requirements of fitting into the grid, the budget and the requirements of SPL and performance.”
“When you’re at a big sporting event — or any event here — the sound is really drives a lot of the emotional connection you have to what’s going on,” Jones explains. “When good sound hits you, it’s a physical experience and the sound system we have here can really drive that sound to our fans and give them that experience. The JBL system delivers volume along with clarity — because you can hear it, you can feel it and you can still understand it.”
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