One Danley Jericho Horn Covers 30,000 Fans at Troy University

Located in southeastern Alabama, Veterans Memorial Stadium is home to the Troy University Trojans. Over the decades, a progression of additions and upgrades raised it up from a glorified grandstand to its current capacity of 30,000 fans. Ever on the lookout for improvements, the school contracted A/V provider All Pro Sound, of Pensacola Florida, who recently revamped the stadium's sound system with Danley's Jericho Horn, the JH-90 (a.k.a. the J1). The system now delivers reference-monitor fidelity to every seat in the horseshoe-shaped bowl at 6dB over the previous system using just a single JH-90 that is positioned behind the upper portion of the scoreboard!

Partly as a consequence of its history, Veterans Memorial Stadium has a few unique features that affected the design of its sound system. Most notably, its scoreboard is set back from the seating by several hundred feet in the open portion of the horseshoe (indeed, between that end zone and the scoreboard is green space, a wall, and a road). "In some respects, it's not ideal," said Chad Edwardson, who was a design engineer at All Pro Sound during this project. "But it does make it easier to deliver consistent SPL across the seating. In that respect, the distance-doubling rule of physics worked with us at Troy University." The nearest seating is approximately 300' and just at the edge of the Jericho Horn's 90-degree beam width. The farthest seating is approximately 700' across the field.

With six 18" low-frequency drivers, six 6" mid-frequency drivers, and three 4" two-way high-frequency drivers, the Jericho Horn JH-90 is a true four-way design. Although users have the option of adding 20,000W of self-power and/or user-adjustable DSP, Edwardson was able to repurpose the stadium's existing amps and outfit the system with an external Danley DSLP48 processor. The combination of Danley technologies (Synergy Horn, along with a new patent-pending HF combiner lens) enables Troy's single Jericho Horn to supply even coverage out to the farthest seats in the stadium. Owing to the Synergy Horn technology on which it is based, the frequency response of the Jericho Horn is smooth in all dimensions with outstanding phase response. "The Jericho Horn is the only box that can simultaneously provide high SPL at the far end of the stadium and yet still sound like a reference monitor at one meter," said Edwardson. "It's the kind of thing you really need to experience to fully appreciate."

The installation itself went exceptionally smoothly. "The Jericho Horn is heavy, sure, but because we can cover an entire 30,000-seat stadium with just a single box, the installation was fast," said Edwardson. "Using a crane, we had the box off the ground, set in place, and properly angled in 15 minutes. After that, the wiring, setup, and tuning all happened in the span of a single day. In the past, I would have spent multiple days on an installation like this. But at Troy, we left from home, made the three-hour drive to Troy, installed the system, tweaked it to perfection, and drove home in time for dinner. That's impressive."

Despite their initial hesitation -- "anyone would be skeptical of a plan to replace ten full-range boxes and four very large, horn-loaded subwoofers with a single horn," noted Edwardson -- the officials at Troy University are very pleased with the Jericho Horn. Edwardson got a first-hand demonstration of the depth of the Jericho Horn's rear rejection. "The amp rack where I was setting up the DSP is also on the scoreboard, but set back from where the JH-90 sits," he said. "During the setup, I thought, 'there's no way this is going to be loud enough!' I didn't doubt the Jericho Horn, but I felt pretty certain we had wired something incorrectly or had the DSP improperly set. But I walked out on the field and found that all was well. The Jericho Horn is just an exceptionally directional box."