HORSHAM, PA – Hatboro-Horsham High School is using a Technomad PA system for sporting events in its outdoor campus stadium. The high school used the system for its fall 2009 football season and will use this system this spring for track and field and other events.
"The clarity and functionality of the system from voice to music is amazing," said Louis James, athletic director. "The system is used for all our home stadium athletic events along with band competitions. The system as a whole is much better than I could have expected for high school events."
The Technomad system, including two Technomad Noho weatherproof loudspeakers and a turnkey signal processing rack, replaced a pair of aging public address horns with unacceptable voice reproduction and low-fidelity musical output. According to Joe Torquato, owner and president of systems integration firm Omega Electronics, Hatboro-Horsham was looking to install something with the fidelity and response of a home audio system.
"The days of using the plain old football field horns with a simple driver and limited frequency response are over," said Torquato. "Students and their parents are used to the quality their mp3 players, iPods and CD players deliver and expect the same quality from pre-show and halftime music. The new system allows for easy hookup of these devices. The Nohos provide plenty of high end; they also reproduce lows and mids very well, which is critical to high-quality musical output. The amount of power they put out covers the entire field. And the clarity of the voice is excellent. It is a very smooth sounding loudspeaker with no dropouts."
Torquato and his team set up the system in under four hours, installing the Nohos on the press box façade following masonry work to smooth the textured brick surface for the mounts. The IP56-rated weatherproof design of the loudspeakers enabled them to work outside and unprotected from the elements year-round.
"The 120×120 conical pattern of the Noho means that installers don't have to fuss with the angles in the way that a 60×40 angle cabinet would require," said Torqauto. "Off-axis, it has a very wide, smooth response that allows two loudspeakers to cover the entire field, just as it does on-axis. That flexibility, along with the weatherproof design, is a big reason why I especially like the Noho for high school football and soccer fields. Following the installation, the athletic director walked the entire field around the track and was amazed at the sound quality and coverage."
The Nohos are wired to a rolling signal processing rack inside the press box. The Technomad Turnkey PA system rack comes complete with a pre-wired amplifier and a six-channel mixer with front-panel iPod/mp3 inputs, as well as a hard-wired microphone.
"One thing that has always impressed me about the Technomad Turnkey PA systems is that I never have to add EQ to the rack," said Torqauto. "I've never had any feedback issues or EQ problems with Technomad loudspeakers, especially with the upper low and lower mid. That's impressive when the loudspeakers are mounted directly to the face of the press box with open windows and a flat, low-end radiating surface, and PA announcements aren't affected at all."
For more information, please visit www.technomad.com.
