TEMPE, AZ — As Barack Obama side-stepped the issue of not being given an honorary degree — and jokingly promised that the university’s leadership would soon be facing scrutiny by the I.R.S. — Clearwing Productions was doing its part to make sure the President’s commencement address was not getting muddled by the resonance problems afflicting Arizona State University’s Sun Devil Stadium.
To optimize the intelligibility of Obama’s address before the graduates and their friends and family — and free up precious seats for the capacity crowd of 70,000 — the Clearwing crew used two of Meyer Sound’s SB-2 parabolic wide-range sound beams.
“Without the SB-2s, it would simply not have been possible to reach the upper corners of the seating areas,” said David Temby, Clearwing’s general manager, noting that the SB-2s worked particularly well in achieving adequate coverage without obstructing the sightlines of attendees and TV cameras. “Any other solution would have called for additional delay stacks, adding significant expense and creating issues with both line-of-sight and time delays.”
Harry Hale, ASU’s technical director, also noted that the sound system solution enabled allowed for more of the graduate’s friends and family members to attend the commencement ceremonies in person. “Using additional delay stacks would have made it necessary to remove a lot more seats,” Hale said, adding that “the SB-2s blended seamlessly with the main PA, and enabled us to provide excellent intelligibility to the entire stadium.”
A few days after the president’s speech, first lady Michelle Obama delivered the commencement address to the first graduating class of the University of California’s newest campus in Merced. Bay Area sound company Pro Media/UltraSound provided audio for the 12,000 attendees, outfitting the field area known to students as The Bowl with three towers of 12 MILO line array loudspeakers and one tower of 16 MILO loudspeakers.
For more information, please visit www.meyersound.com.
