Hi Guys!

I've got a question for you. We are planning to have our Christmas and New year's worship in this facility. Round-shaped basketball arena, dome-shaped roof. Slap-back echoes and long decay times galore!!! Which would be a better solution for this situation? Have the stage and of course and the speaker system in the center or have the everything on one side of the basketball ring area? We have a very diverse mix of styles of praise & worship. From choral to live band to acoustic worship/acapella.

My take is have it in the center atleast the sound sources are close to the audience and so can have a much lower SPL and less excitement in the venue's acoustics(also much better control with the speaker dispersion as well) than when you have it on one side of the venue and you have to push your levels up just to reach the people on the other side.

I hope I can hear back from you guys! Thanks!

Either way it is going to sound terrible I should think.

hanging tabs along the walls would help to dampen the sound.... thats if you have access to any.

If you do the event in the round then there will be speakers facing everywhere..... so the sound will be bouncing all over the room! If you eq it right then there are possibilities of cutting out certain frequencies that echo in that particular room.

If you can attract enough bodies to the event then there will be less echo as the bodies will soak up the sound.

What options do you have for rigging? Whats your budget? Are you hiring in the gear to do the job, or useing a system that your facility already own.

The ideal system would be four hangs of a narrow dispersion line array (ie d&b's Q1) one on each side of a centrally postioned stage, all running in mono, just be carefull of the amount of subs you put in. With a hang of delays at the half way point, to keep overall level down. The line array will stop the problem of stray sound boucing around the venue, and, as long as your full, the inteligability should be fine.

Its hard to give any specific advice, without specific questions, though a basketball court is just a smaller scale arena, so the same sollutions would apply, though, obviosly on a smaller scale.

Hope this helps, but if you post a more precise series of questions, I'm sure we'll be able to give you better answers.

RJ

Hi thanks! We are going to hire a PA company to do the job. No problems with rigging and hang points.

Which would be a better setup spl wise and intelligibility wise? Center stage or stage on one side?

Forgive me with my naive/stupid questions.

If you are going to a hire company, I would recommend talking to them, as they will know their kit, and how it would work in the setting you will need it. The pa companies I work for tend to have a standard setup for most of the major venues in the uk, then tweak it to suit the needs of the prduction. In the round will be harder work for your perfoemers, as they have to remember four sides of the stage not just one, but talk to the pa boys, your artistic lot, and decide what wuld work best for you.

And talk to people who have used the venue before. If it's a modern basketball arena - there will most likely be a central scoreboard that may lift/lower. The most intelligable sound usually comes from keeping paths short and angles maintained to prevent as much reflection - So the idea of central stage and sound angled down from above shoould work better. try to avoid firing sound into anything other than people!

For spoken word I suspect you may have to put up with pretty poor sound.