California Memorial Stadium bolstered by Meyer Sound system

The University of California’s Memorial Stadium has become the world’s first sports facility to utilise Meyer Sound‘s beam steering technology.

The installation of 40 CAL column array loudspeakers around the stadium’s outer rim is designed to provide high speech intelligibility in the 63,000-capacity home of the University of California Golden Bears.

The Meyer system emerged as the ideal solution for Dallas-based acoustical consultants Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams (WJHW), as for both architectural and environmental noise reasons, a point-source, scoreboard-mounted system would have been too problematic.

“We concluded fairly early in the process that a distributed system was the best solution,” said WJHW principal Jack Wrightson. “Later we found out that Meyer Sound was developing the CAL loudspeaker, and it ended up being the right solution. It kept the historic look of the façade and by all accounts the university is very happy with the performance.”

The majority of the CAL 96 loudspeakers are spaced around the bowl rim, with the sound precisely steered to cover the stands with minimal spill onto the field. Two additional CAL 96 loudspeakers are mounted facing the student section.

“From an architectural viewpoint, we loved it,” added Joe Diesko, vice president at lead architects HNTB and project manager for the architectural team. “The traditional distributed approach would be big square boxes sitting up there, and a big cluster at one end was out of the question. The CAL solution was just brilliant. They look great, and they sound fabulous.”

Stands below the new press box required a different setup – Meyer Sound MSL-4, UPM-1P, and UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers. Coverage for the University Club, under-scoreboard and club level sections is now supplied by MM-4 and MM-4XP self-powered loudspeakers, along with additional UPM-1P loudspeakers. Galileo loudspeaker management systems with three Galileo 616 processors provide signal drive and alignment.

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