That said , it ’ s been clear from the outset that the primary focus of Mosaic Stadium is professional football .
Smith + Andersen worked closely with the architects and engineers to cover as many of the seats in their initial bowl system design as possible ; however , owing to the unique shape of the stadium , some of the seating areas were slightly or completely blocked , so house fills were deployed to cover the sonic shadows .
Notably , the PA was required to interface with the fire alarm and emergency paging system , particularly in the main bowl . “ That ’ s becoming more prevalent in large sports facilities , where the main bowl system can relay an emergency page ,” Bernatsky offers , adding that the back-of-house areas are on a separate alarm and paging system .
“ This is a relatively new concept in North America in particular ,” Bernatsky continues . “ In Europe , they have regulations and protocols they ’ ve followed in these types of scenarios , but in North America , each jurisdiction handles that a little differently .”
Su adds that working within an electrical engineering firm was of particular benefit when it came to submitting a variance report to the City of Regina . “ So between our team and our contractor and code consultants , we could specify why this approach was important and why it ’ s practical to use a large stadium system for emergency paging .”
The control components for the majority of the system are housed in the main game operations centre – a designated space on the west side of the stadium where the game operations teams and technical producers will operate adjacent to the mix engineers and announcers .
Being a primarily Harman Professional-based spec , the system incorporates Crown amplification and BSS DSP throughout , though it ’ s a Roland M5000C digital console at the primary mix position .
“ We ’ ve had some great experiences with Roland in the past ,” Bernatsky attests about the choice . “ It ’ s a very good user interface , and very price competitive considering the feature set , so we could meet budget and performance requirements without any difficulty whatsoever .”
Su notes that the venue employs an interesting DSP solution incorporated by Advance Pro ’ s Wayne Edel , who suggested pairing Dante with BSS ’ s proprietary BLU link protocol . The solution essentially offers a combination of networking protocols .
With its open west end , the stadium resembles a horseshoe that ’ s been divided into four networking quadrants . From the central equipment location , audio can be distributed to the four connected quadrants via Dante .
“ Once you ’ ve hit that first processor , now you can go within those processors in each quadrant and then digitally to all the amplifiers with BLU link ,” Su explains . “ So there ’ s a degree of redundancy through Dante , but there ’ s some efficiency in BLU link because , when you ’ re in a manufacturer ’ s ecosystem , you can take advantage of a lot of their enhanced features from control and monitoring , and we basically did that with Hi-Q Net , combining the two layers of digital networking technology .”
Bernatsky says the biggest challenge his team faced on the integration side came down to the positioning and rigging for the main bowl system , as is usually the case with large venue systems . With the spectator roof raked around in the aforementioned horseshoe design , there was plenty of steel to access for rigging ; however , it wasn ’ t always in the optimal configuration .
“ In a lot of cases , the steel wasn ’ t at the ideal angle or we couldn ’ t use the desired points for structural reasons ,” Bernatsky continues . “ It ’ s not something that surprised us , but it is a consistent and ongoing challenge in large venues like this .”
While loudspeaker prediction software has advanced substantially over the years to offer a very accurate idea of coverage , Bernatsky says he and his team often wish there was a program that could accurately
36 • PROFESSIONAL SOUND