LEA Professional scores a touchdown with a high powered install at East Carolina University Stadium.

When East Carolina University stadium experienced debilitating audio issues right in the middle of football season, they turned to PC Sound and LEA Professional to rescue the season and restore the fan experience.

Dowdy–Ficklen Stadium is the on-campus football facility at East Carolina University for the East Carolina Pirates in Greenville, North Carolina. The stadium has a capacity of 50,000, making it the second largest college stadium in North Carolina.

James Braddy, Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) at PC Sound, a local specialist in pro audio, video and lighting installations, got a call on a Monday in September ​​from the Associate Athletics Director at ECU, Greg Pierce. Pierce explained that the previous weekend’s home game had been overshadowed by a series of audio issues.

On the weekend in question, stadium goers and players had complained that they couldn’t hear, and the system would cut in and out. According to Braddy, 60% of the stadium’s legacy amplifiers were off and the other ones were going into thermal protection mode.

While PC Sound tried to find a solution fast, they also knew the current supply chain could be an issue.

“We put the order in on a Tuesday at 7pm and within 4 minutes I had a reply from Scott Robbins the VP of Sales, with different options. The amplifiers were delivered to us on that Thursday and on Friday we did the install, ready for the weekend’s games.” 

“One of my favorite things about these amplifiers is just the speed of setup”, said Braddy. “Being able to push a button and connect to it with my phone or iPad tablet, without downloading an app or registering an account is fantastic.”

The PC Sound team installed eight 704D Dante Connect Series amplifiers from LEA Professional.

The following game sounded even better according to the team at PC Sound, and the stadium was ready for homecoming the following week, which included a performance by a live band.

In order to monitor the system, PC Sound utilizes the LEA Professional Web UI. The Web App UI is LEA Professional’s browser-based interface which allows local monitoring of every amplifier connected to the network from any phone, tablet, or PC. In addition, it allows users to view the status of every channel on any given amp. This alongside the remote control LEA Cloud platform, ensures the integrator is in full control of the system at all times. 

PC Sound is considering adding this remote monitoring service as an additional feature to their service contracts.

Currently the system at ECU runs on analog connections, but the plan in the immediate future is to switch it over to a Dante audio network. This provides the stadium with another safety feature, if the Dante network goes down for any reason, it will automatically switch to analog.