| Still regarded as one of the USA's finest multipurpose sporting venues after more than fifteen years of continuous use, Miami's Pro Player Stadium is the home of both the Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins. Opened as Joe Robbie Stadium on August 16, 1987 when the NFL Dolphins
moved in, the 75,000-seat facility became a site for major league baseball action when the Marlins came to South Florida in 1993. Renamed Pro Player Stadium in 1996 following the sale of its naming rights, the structure underwent an audio upgrade earlier this year bringing a vast distributed system to its grandstands powered by both CX Series and PowerLight amplifiers from QSC-all of which are monitored and controlled by the Costa Mesa, California-based manufacturer's QSControl network audio system.
Working from a spec and blueprint created by WJHW in Dallas, TX, the Miami offices of Pro Sound, Inc. implemented the wide-sweeping design. "Despite its age, the system installed in '87 was still working reasonably well prior to and during the upgrade," notes Pro Sound's Scott Pearson. "After 15 years of being continuously on, they certainly got their money's worth out of it. The only real reason for the change was...well, it was time. Rather than have the age factor eventually cause some type of critical failure, the owners decided the moment was right to allow the old rig to bow out gracefully."
With the original system still in place, Pro Sound began moving in the components for the new one. By necessity of the budget, all of the new amplifiers had to fit into only two equipment rooms. "There wasn't much room for our gear to begin with," Pearson further relates. "And to compound matters, we lost a considerable amount of valuable real estate to the existing amps, which had to remain in place until we were done in order to keep the old system running."
Fortunately for Pro Sound, the compact and lightweight design of the QSC amps specified for the project permitted 78 CX1102s, 69 PowerLight PL4.0s, and a pair of CX1202Vs to slide right into the allotted space. "There was a definite need here for us to be able to tightly pack a stack of amps into the racks and not have to worry about thermal issues," Pearson adds.
"Basically, it sounds like a touring system," Pearson says of the rig's performance. "The old rig may have served faithfully, but this one offers a lot more in terms of features, and is about as crystal clear as you can get when it comes to intelligibility." |
With the QSControl audio network, system operators at Pro Player Stadium can easily keep tabs on the sprawling distributed system via detailed performance data available on every amp and loudspeaker right at a control room-mounted PC. To accommodate the multipurpose needs of the venue, two presets were also established with the audio network that can be used to configure the stadium for either football or baseball with a mere click of a mouse.
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