14 DAY TRIAL // Looks like it's been a busy start of the year for Crown Amplifiers: the long-awaited press releases finally got on my desk so here comes another one for the fans of audio technology.
In sunny California people play ice hockey, no matter how sunny it may be outside. The Honda Center, formerly known as the Arrowhead Pond, is a 17,000-place venue every hockey-lover comes to with thrill and pleasure each time action boasts. And since modern sports are way much into seeing as well as into actually hearing what's going on, the owners of the Honda Center decided it was time for some serious upgrade and for new, hi-performance gear.
Not only because NHL action or World Wrestling Entertainment matches are what the Honda Center is famous for; world-class artists have delighted their fans here and we could say that about Madonna, U2, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Phil Collins, Aerosmith or Paul McCartney, just to name a few of them. So, the move begins to become more and more obvious...
A sound consulting company was hired to make the operation and find the most appropriate gear to fit in the place of the old one. Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams (WJHW) finally went for Crown amps powering JBL PD series loudspeakers and BSS Soundweb London BLU-80 signal processors.
The hi-class Crown CTs series amps have been chosen to replace the old ones as following: 12 CTs 1200 Lite for HF, 8 CTs 2000 Lite for MF and 38 CTs 3000 Lite for the center sound cluster only. All sound and settings, as well as all feedback info travels by fiber optics and the Crown amps are loaded with IQ-PIP (Programmable Input Processor) modules allowing them to both execute commands remotely sent to them as well as provide error reporting and generic usage feedback data to the main Crown IQ control center.
The "smart" amp-array allows for both unprecedented versatility in sound configuring and adaptation as well as for very in-the-know exploitation conditions, preventing large-scale system failures as any malfunction is detectable with just a few clicks. The Harman Pro HiQnet software allows sound engineers to analyze, monitor and even operate each amp individually and this reflects in a more accurate acoustic response from the whole system as well as in the positive feedback received from the public.
