Carver-Hawkeye Arena Receives Danley Sound Labs Upgrade

The University of Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye Arena recently deployed a full Danley Sound Labs sound reinforcement system for the university’s 15,400-seat arena.

Constructed in 1983, the Carver-Hawkeye Area hosts a variety of important events every year, from concerts and graduation ceremonies to speeches and sporting events.

Both Larry Lucas of Anthony James Partners and acoustician Doug Jones designed and commissioned the new Danley system, while Parsons Electric of Minneapolis, Minnesota installed the new technology from Danley.

“Amazingly, Carver-Hawkeye Arena managed to get by with the original installed sound system for over thirty years!” explained Dave Potts, a veteran field systems engineer at Parsons Electric. “But that was obviously dated technology. They were hoping for much better intelligibility, greater musical impact, and better user control. The new system gives them all of that, and we managed to pull the old system out and put the new system in in just six weeks! That included pulling new cable and negotiating a bunch of other contractors (they were replacing the scoreboards and making other renovations at the same time!) For a while, we had to work around fourteen boom lifts, cranes, and crane trucks on the floor – only five of which were ours!”

The new installations from Danley includes eight loudspeaker clusters to cover the main bowl of the arena, two of which use a pair of Danley SH-96HOs each. The other clusters use a pair of Danley SH-96s each. Another two Danley SH-96s at either end of the basketball court to cover the floor.

Ten Danley SM-80s form a ring to deliver delayed coverage to the upper bowl, and two clusters of three Danley TH-118 subwoofers each offer tight low-end support. Fourteen four-channel Danley DNA 20K4 Pro amplifiers power the systems with 280,000W. Lastly, a QSC Q-Sys DSP system gives the arena control of presets for different types of functions, namely the ability to turn individual clusters on or off based on the size of an event via a GUI that contains other vital system controls.