At just over 100,000 square feet, the main Exposition Building at the Bell County Expo Center is the largest of its kind in Central Texas.
The expansive complex includes the Main Arena, used for trade shows and expositions, a luxurious Special Events Room that accommodates up to 250 guests, and a 1,200-capacity Assembly Hall. And with a wide range of events to accommodate, the centre recently revamped its audio system.
As well as being home to the CenTex Barracudas indoor football team, the 6,559-seat regional event center also hosts the annual Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Central Texas State Fair, as well as more than 200 community events each year.
Its original sound system was based around Community Professional Loudspeakers’ RS880 three-way systems. While still in good order, supporting the high-level music used in current concerts and events called for a boost in sound pressure levels.
Accordingly, an upgraded system was designed by Christopher ‘Topper’ Sowden of Sowden Associates and installed by Electro Acoustics of Fort Worth – the same companies that designed and installed the original system, respectively, some 20 years earlier. Ths comprises a series of Community M4 drivers in PC494 and PC1594M horns. Low frequencies are pumped up by four Community R6 bass horns, and the system is powered by QSC PL380 amplification.
‘Sowden & Associates could have used a line-array system for the design but line-arrays aren’t the ideal choice for every application,’ says the centre’s Assistant Director, John Dungan. ‘We decided to go with Community’s horn-loaded system because we needed a powerful, durable system to handle the high audio output at our events.’
The precision molding process used in the construction of Community’s mid- and high-frequency fibreglass horns provides consistent and predictable pattern control. The horns are weather resistant, an important factor at the Expo Center where dust and dirt are frequently kicked up by rodeos, livestock expositions and monster truck rallies.
‘We were confident the new system would sound good, based on our existing Community system, but it’s exceeded even our own high expectations,’ Dungan reports.
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