Bama’s Bryant Denny Stadium Gets Audio Upgrade with Community Professional Loudspeakers

The University of Alabama’s Bryant Denny Stadium is one of college football’s oldest and most storied stadiums, and with the recent $80.6 million expansion to the stadium’s south end zone, it’s also one of the biggest. With a seating capacity of approximately 101,000, Bryant Denny is now the largest stadium in the SEC.

The expanded south end zone includes a two-level South Zone club with more than 1700 seats and 36 skyboxes, as well as an 8500-seat upper deck. Concurrent to the expansion, the entire stadium’s audio and visual systems are being upgraded, including two new video scoreboards and a distributed audio system.

The sound system, designed by consulting firm BAi, LLC, includes more than 75 of Community Professional Loudspeakers’ WET-Series W2-2W8 two-way full-range cabinets. The stadium’s previous system, in place for many years, was problematic even before the current stadium expansion.

“The previous system consisted of a multi-device point source system located in the south end zone scoreboard,” says Miller. “The owner was unhappy with the performance of the existing system’s lack of voice intelligibility in the seats, and gain before feedback issues on the playing field.”

As Baker Audio’s Joe Schuch explains, the WET-Series loudspeakers provide focused coverage to some of the stadium’s most challenging zones and were selected specifically for their superior intelligibility.

“We used the Community boxes to cover the deep, dark recesses of the under-balcony seating,” says Miller. “That’s an area that normally suffers from low frequency build-up and poor intelligibility. The Community loudspeakers were an excellent choice for this application, providing the coverage and intelligibility needed for a technically challenging acoustical environment.”