Meyer CAL loudspeakers improve Bank of America Stadium sound

The Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina has been equipped with 30 steerable CAL column array loudspeakers from Meyer Sound.

The new sound system at the home of the Carolina Panthers NFL team is being used to provide "exceptional intelligibility" for the 37,000 fans in the upper deck area.

The slender profile of CAL harmoniously blends in with flagpoles, solving an aesthetic challenge in distributed sound systems for sports venues.

“The Panthers’ stadium doesn’t have a continuous lighting catwalk like other NFL stadiums, so there was no place to put the sizeable conventional speakers we would need to cover the upper level without having large clusters up on poles,” said Mark Graham, system designer and an associate of consultants Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams (WJHW). “Aesthetically, the clusters would have been a hard sell to the architects and stadium management.”

Cliff Miller, Carolina Panthers audio director, added: “The CAL loudspeakers were probably the deciding factor in going with a distributed system in that stadium because of their slim profile. With the CALs, you notice the flags more than the speakers. They look like an integral element of the architecture.”

The CAL 96 loudspeakers are spaced evenly between the lighting towers and configured for a 30-degree downward beam tilt and five-degree vertical beam spread. The result is uniform, wide-bandwidth coverage to the farthest seats located over 100 feet away.

“The CAL loudspeakers handle everything exceptionally well—not just the announcers, but also music playback, referee mics, and live bands, which the CALs handle easily,” Miller continued. “We’re not running them at anywhere near their full potential.”

The Meyer Sound system was provided and installed by Minneapolis-based Parsons Technologies, a division of Parsons Electric.

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