Chase Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, in Phoenix, Arizona, has installed a new audio system, featuring Cohesion CO12 loudspeakers. Opened in 1998, the 48,330-seat retractable-roof stadium has traditionally augmented its year-round entertainment offerings beyond baseball. But the Chase Field executive team envisioned attracting a wider range of high-profile events with an upgraded PA.
Steve Silvertooth, manager of broadcast engineering for the Diamondbacks, heard the Cohesions during a Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks concert at Chase Field, in December 2023, and wanted them for the upcoming project. Ultimately, the Chase Field system integrated the same CO12 featured in the concert.
Clair Global Integration (CGI) installed the system in a few weeks prior to the 2024 baseball season. The main PA, comprised of 18 CO12 per side adjacent to the centrefield scoreboard, provided coverage for the bulk of the stadium seating. An additional integration of nine CO12 per side underneath, and rotated relative to the main clusters, provided further coverage of the outfield and side seating.
This alignment, in lieu of more traditional co-located arrays, reduced interference in the lower end of the spectrum and worked well for the unique physical characteristics and reflective surfaces within Chase Field.
The system design accounted for those venue attributes, such as the nine-million-pound retractable steel roof and the large (20ft x 15ft) doors that open by the north concourse when weather permits.
The system also included an upgrade to the control room reference monitors by integrating a pair of Cohesion CF10 point source loudspeakers. These fill speakers are voiced similarly to the CO12 and therefore extended the full-range response of the outfield arrays into the control room to improve mixing of gameday audio and live performances.
The bandwidth of the CO12, with coverage down to 35 Hz, eliminated the need for subwoofers, which saved valuable space in an area with limited room for installation.
The heart of the system, confirmed Demetrius Palavos, VP of sports integration & special projects, Clair Global, is the CO12: “The coverage is phenomenal. Often the edges of the polar patterns don’t give even coverage, but Cohesion provides the same pattern across the spectrum. As you’re transitioning from cluster to cluster, you can’t tell it’s handing off,” he commented.
Silvertooth complimented the consistency and clarity of the system, specifically of the CO12, describing that each seating section was within 1–2 dB of one another across the full breadth of the stadium from the upper deck to the area directly behind home plate. “I didn’t think that could be achieved, and it exceeded. The coverage is phenomenal,” he asserted.
Brad Ricks, senior design engineer for sports & entertainment venues, Clair Global Integration, commented:. “Going that low and covering it extremely well is impressive. We can be 500 feet away and feel our clothes moving, and the sound is very focused and directed.”
