Facing the track, pole speakers were assembled and attached to the poles on the ground, along with light fixtures, with the finished assemblies lifted by crane to positions 190 feet off the ground. “You wanted to have each of them assembled and tested before they went up,” says Savage. “At that height you don’t want to have to work on them in place.”
All grandstand and concourse speakers are connected via copper cabling and managed with a combination of 14 BSS Soundweb London BLU-806, three BLU-326, 10 BLU-BOBs, and four BLU0-BOB digital signal processors, all of which are Dante enabled, and which combine a sizable number of audio sources, including background music, paging and life safety.
Vast Concourse Video
The concourse video solution comprises more than 600 Samsung 40-, 48- 55- and 65-inch commercial-grade LED screens, located in all shops, bars and other concessions; the 768 screens that are exposed are Peerless-AV 47- and 55-inch weatherized outdoor displays.
Savage points out that while weather is one issue, outdoor AV is also exposed to a unique NASCAR mix of brake dust and rubber particle from tires. “It can float in the air for days,” he says. “Daytona International Speedway made sure to bring that to our attention.”
Audio and video are matrixed on fiber through a central control room on the ground floor (though systems operators sit in an observation area on the sixth level near the broadcast-announcer booths) and routed to 10 MDF closets, two of which flank each injector, holding a total of 80 Crown DCi series audio amplifiers and network switches for the Dante-enabled Soundweb.
“The way racetracks are going to be built in the future will change because of this,” says Gonzalez
AV is distributed over copper from these to the screens and speakers. Audio and video signals are managed by an AMX NX-1200 control processor and take in content from sources including DirecTV, broadcast television and the venue’s own IP video, which includes NASCAR commercials and marketing messages. These are managed by a TriplePlay dedicated signage and media server system that utilizes Amino set-top boxes for the Peerless-AV monitors and Samsung’s Smart Signage Platform (SSP) for Samsung displays.
Whether or not Daytona Rising fuels more fans to go to the speedway rather than watch from home remains to be seen, but the sheer magnitude of the project already makes its completion a success.
Gonzalez says Daytona Rising was a learning experience, for them, for the International Speedway Corp., and all of the vendors involved. “It’s never been done before, this kind of scale,” he says, still in awe of it himself.
“The way racetracks are going to be built in the future will change because of this. The number of speakers we used to provide clear sound in an environment this loud, it’s not been done before. How video everywhere keeps the fans involved. This is the future of racing.”
