San Antonio Alamodome Ups Its Game With Additional L-Acoustics Systems

When is a stadium an arena, and an arena a stadium? When it’s the Alamodome, San Antonio, Texas’ municipally owned super-flexible venue that can hold as many as 72,000 fans and host anything from a football match to basketball games, such as the ones it once accommodated for the NBA San Antonio Spurs for a decade. These days, the Alamodome notably serves as the regional host venue for the UIL State Basketball Finals, as well as for graduations and other ceremonies and events for UTSA and other schools.

Getting basketball and football into the same venue is no easy task (it also has two permanent Olympic-size ice rinks that can be used for NHL games, figure skating, and speed skating), with seating significantly reconfigured for each type of use, and thus also needing highly flexible audio coverage. Previously, that task fell to an L-Acoustics K2 main PA system installed in 2017, but it wasn’t designed to effectively address an entire basketball court area. Recently, however, a new combined L-Acoustics K2 and A15i system was added that is designed as just that: to be the dedicated center-cluster system for the venue when one half of the domed bowl is configured for the basketball games that now dominate its sports agenda.

“The two systems are designed to be completely independent of each other, and completely reconfigurable,” says Ryan Knox, Senior Consultant at Salas O'Brien, the project’s consultant, which provided the design from which the city conducted the bid process for equipment vendors and integration services. “The challenge here was understanding how they needed to use the space, and the different kinds of events they were doing.”

But he says the system choice might have been the easiest part of it. “There was already an L-Acoustics K2 system in there, so when you reconfigure the systems, they’re able to use the same software, the same network, the same amplifiers. Plus, there’s the sonic consistency you have between the two systems for the entire venue. Yes, an easy choice.”

The new system comprises 56 L-Acoustics K2 and 28 A15i Wide, collectively powered by 31 LA12X and 12 LA4X amplified controllers. “This system serves as a multifunction one, and it really expands the venue’s capabilities,” says Jordan Pierce, Integrated Systems Sales Engineer for LD Systems, which did the installation and integration. “They can do tennis here now, volleyball championships—anything that’s essentially roughly the size of a basketball court. It allows them to sell the venue more for smaller events to clients who would have thought it too big and unaffordable. They can bring down, reconfigure, and alternately utilize this new sound system for whatever event they want in there.”

That capability includes being able to move some of the K2 to the corners of the stadium when the entire floor area is needed, assuring full coverage to anywhere in the venue. That was indeed the case when the venue seating and system were reconfigured for an NCAA event.

“They actually brought in extra stands and extended the angle of the stands to get all the way to a center basketball court in the center of the stadium, and they needed floor coverage for that extended seating,” he says. “They used the main house K2, and then they added these new arena K2 to be hung underneath it to specifically cover the larger main floor. There also needed to be speakers to help capture sound that’s blocked by LED walls. So now there is appropriate sound way up in the corners and the upper levels and below the sign under the LED walls. Ryan’s team’s use of L-Acoustics’ Soundvision software was critical in helping figure out the best placement for those.”

Ben Sturgis, Alamodome’s Senior Audio Tech, proudly reports the new K2 system has been performing flawlessly. “In terms of the sound quality, the new system is everything I would have expected from my experience with L-Acoustics,” he says. “But now, it’s especially nice to have one that’s this flexible in terms of positioning, because when we did the Final Four in 2017, we had to rent everything; now we own the PA.”

And that, Sturgis adds, has significant implications for the venue’s future, including economically. “Before, for a lot of events, if they needed an unconventional PA setup, the only option was for them to go to an outside vendor,” he explains. “And now we can provide that for them. Our big example is college and high school graduations; we do about 10 colleges and 40 high schools every year, and for the last 10 years we've had to rent a PA for a month every summer to do it. We’re not going to have to do that anymore. We own it so we can just deploy it.”

So when is a stadium an arena and an arena a stadium? Whenever they want this venue to be whatever it needs to be, whenever they need it, thanks to an incredibly flexible and great-sounding L-Acoustics sound system. “It really does sound fantastic,” says Pierce. “While the venue can seem complicated, the sound is simply great.”

For more details on the Alamodome, visit www.alamodome.com. Salas O’Brien and LD Systems can each be found online at www.salasobrien.com and www.ldsystems.com.

Please visit L-Acoustics at www.l-acoustics.com.

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