Yale Campus Music Bowl Installs Certified Pre-owned d&b J-Series

Westville Music Bowl is formerly the CT Tennis Center on the Yale University campus in New Haven. In normal times, it can seat up to 10,000 but with coronavirus guidelines, it currently hosts 4,000 attendees. Since Westville Music Bowl is completely outdoors, the venue has been able to entertain a larger capacity than other neighboring music venues. However, after May 19, CDC and state guideline will be updated to reflect full seating capacity with specific guidelines for attendees.

The bowl is the first arena worldwide to take advantage of the recently announced d&b audiotechnik re-manufactured certified pre-owned (CPO) program with a J-Series loudspeaker system. The first show to use the CPO J-Series was for Government Mule with most of the season events pre-sold out.

d&b CPO J-Series was born from an initiative to extend the life of a rider-friendly loudspeaker system while conserving natural resources and reducing waste. Remanufacturing is the process of returning a used product to at least its original manufactured performance and quality standards, and the work is performed in Asheville, NC at the d&b main US office as well as the factory in Backnang, Germany.

DNR Laboratories of Watertown, CT installed the CPO-J. “Thanks to timing of the CPO J-Series’ avaliability, it was exactly what our client required,” states Donnie Gamsjager, President, DNR. “Warranty was critical; the CPO J-Series comes with a factory warranty as a used re-purposed system. It was also a huge cost savings over competitors’ used systems, and even competitors new systems in some cases! For a sustainably-minded venue, this pre-owned solution was perfect.”

Gamsjager said another determining factor is the proven track record of well-controlled directivity of d&b loudspeakers. “The J-Series are known for keeping the sound forward facing and minimising artifacts off the sides and rear of the box. The system stands on its own without subwoofers in the air that would have created a huge noise pollution issue and taken up much of the valuable rigging space. SL-SUBs’ cardioid pattern and output were attractive to the owner to keep the low end inside the venue and out of the neighborhood. NoizCalc software also helps us to predict the venue’s noise emissions and provided useful data when applying for zoning and permits from the city.”

“We’ve done 5 shows over 2 weekends at Westville, and I have to say I am thrilled with the performance of this J-Series rig,” states Tim Burke, Production Manager.

“The venue is getting rave reviews on having fantastic audio and no sightline issues,” states Dave Niedbalski, promoter for the venue.

The complete system contains 28 x CPO J8/J12 (14 per side), 12 x Y8 (outfills – 6 per side), 8 x Ti10P (front fills), and 8 x SL-GSUB.  Amplifiers are 30D installation models for all loudspeaker systems except for the subwoofers which are on D80 amplifiers. A dedicated computer running d&b R1 Control software is used for easy-to-work control for audio distribution of the entire system.