Howards Grove High School of Sheboygan, Wisconsin serves over three-hundred students from Howards Grove and nearby communities. The high school made do for years without an auditorium of its own by appropriating the gymnasium, the cafeteria, classrooms, or even neighboring schools’ auditoriums. That’s all changed now with the completion of its own 450-seat auditorium adjacent to the gymnasium, complete with the high-fidelity and even coverage of Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers.
“The students at Howards Grove High School are very active in the performing arts, especially music, but they didn’t have a purpose-built space in which to perform,” explained Robb Peters, system designer/project manager at Professional Audio Designs, the Wauwatosa, Wisconsin-based AV integration firm that designed and installed the system. “I took the specifications for the new auditorium and modeled it in EASE in order to design a system that would provide even coverage across the entire seating area.” Peters also stepped in to tune and commission the system once it was installed. “We put a great deal of emphasis on the tuning of these types of systems.” The best equipment in world doesn’t mean all that much if it’s not set up correctly. It is during the tuning process that we can really validate the design. This is where we see how closely the measured loudspeaker coverage matches that predicted in the model. It helps that the EASE data furnished for the Danley products very accurately represents their performance.
The completed system consists primarily of three Danley SH60 full-range loudspeakers in an exploded mono cluster flown across the front of the proscenium. Four delayed Danley SM60s mounted in front of a catwalk further back in the auditorium cover an area of raked seating in the rear. Two Danley THmini subwoofers built into cavities below the stage generate robust bass. Six Innovox HLAs provide front fill, with power from QSC CXD-Series amplifiers, and processing from a QSC Q-SYS Core 510 processor. All of the loudspeakers are flown with APE Rigging.
“Getting even sound pressure and uniformity of coverage across the entire space was key,” Peters said. “Danley’s patented horn-loaded technology gives them pattern control that is extremely well-behaved. The actual performance really matches the model performance, and we were able to give Howards Grove High School +/-1.5 dB across the entire seating area. This uniformity of coverage is typical of our design goals. The school is extremely happy with the results.”
