When Allen Fieldhouse is packed to capacity and rocking during a men’s basketball game, it’s difficult to hear anything besides the shrill roars, foot stomping and overall intensity of the crowd.
That’s good.
When players and emcees calmly speak into the microphone at, say, Late Night With Roy Williams or Senior Day, it’s also difficult if not impossible to hear anything.
That’s bad.
“The steel and reverberation makes it loud in there and creates the great atmosphere,” KU facilities director Darren Cook said. “Trying to create intelligible sound is a different ballgame. You want the best of both worlds, and that’s difficult in a building that opened in 1955 and has so much steel and a sound system in the ceiling in four different corners.”
The problem with the sound system in Allen Fieldhouse, Cook said, stems from the fact the speakers put in during the early 1980s are high up in the corners.
KU would like a center sound system on the scoreboard.
“We checked with an engineering firm in Topeka. They came on site and were not willing to give permission to take the risk adding 4,800 pounds of weight (for center speakers),” Cook said. “They did not want to authorize more weight off the existing frames on the center scoreboard.”
So for Late Night, which featured some live music and a sound stage, KU promotions brought in some speakers that were hung from the rafters in various locations. The setup obviously didn’t work, with many fans and KU coach Roy Williams complaining about not being able to hear the skits and music and simple talking into the microphone.
So what about the upcoming season? KU apparently will make do with the current sound system until the day a new video board is purchased and hung from the rafters.
The Jayhawks have been planning to hire an engineering firm to study adding a video board with sound system, plus a new lighting system.
One problem is Allen Fieldhouse’s roof will only support so much weight, and a new video board and state-of-the-art sound system might be deemed too heavy to hang in the center of the fieldhouse.
“We are assuming a new video board would be a center-hung board if the roof structure would allow it,” Cook said. A sound system alone would likely cost between $250,000 and $400,000, with the video board and lighting much more.
“I do not know how we will improve the sound system more than now until we get a center-hung system,” Cook said. “Without the permission to hang weight, we are stuck with what we’ve got. It’ll be a major project and makes no sense to not tie the video board in with sound and lighting. You don’t want problems later on where you add lights and it interferes (with sound system). Those three things need to be at least engineered at one time.”
