Danny Michael

March 10, 2005

Prochnow Auditorium is one of the hubs of campus life at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Built in 1951, it hosts the Campus Film Program, a series of feature film presentations for students, as well as live presentations such as concerts, plays - and at one time was home of the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra. The Prochnow, which seats 938, is a basic 1950’s style standard shoebox style auditorium. The large stage measures 29 feet deep from curtain to back wall and is 46 feet wide with a covered orchestra pit. Overall, the auditorium is about 70 feet wide with a 125-foot deep throw distance. “A few pieces of the current sound system were in use 30 years ago when I managed the room,” said Greg Crosman of Clear Aire Audio in Flagstaff, who was hired to update the sound system. “Actually, there are two separate systems in the auditorium: a 35mm-film playback system for movies and a house sound system for live performances.” “We had been slowly upgrading the old sound system for years,” Crosman said. “But now our job was to create a full-range sound system. Neither of the existing systems contained any subwoofers, so our main plan was to augment the two existing systems with one bass system that could be utilized by both the film playback and house sound systems.” Crosman selected a pair of BAG END S21E subwoofers to deliver the bottom end for the auditorium. The S21E, which contains a single 21-inch subwoofer, is one of the largest single-speaker enclosures made in the industry today. It boasts a flat frequency response down to 8 Hz. In a relatively small enclosure. The outside measurements of the cabinet are 24½ inches high by 24½ inches wide by 20½ inches deep. “The S21E delivers higher output than a similar-size conventional bass system and, at the same time, delivers quick, tight musical bass signal while maintaining a flat response,” said BAG END Sales Manager John Marcopulos. Hiding the two subwoofers turned out to be a fairly simple operation for Crosman once they identified a viable location. “When the Prochnow Auditorium opened 40-plus years ago, it featured an organ in the house left area and two large coves for the organ’s speakers at extreme stage left and stage right,” Crosman said. “The organ is long gone and the spaces where its old speakers had been located were unused, so an in-house crew, headed up by T.C. Eberly, installed the subs in those spaces and covered by the original grill cloth. “Thus, they are perfectly placed for maximum performance, but virtually invisible,” he said. “We added a custom sub mix system in the common rack for the electronics backstage so that any signal can go through the subs. That way, we can use the same BAG END bass system for the regular day-in-and-day-out house sound system as well as the film playback sound system,” he said. “This is the third auditorium on campus in which we have installed BAG END gear, and we are really pleased with the performance of their products,” Crosman concluded. Clear Aire Audio is located at 10690 Cedar Valley Ranch Road, Flagstaff, Ariz, 86004, telephone: (928) 774-5103. The e-mail address is: clearaire@flagstaff.az.us

Northern Arizona University, with an enrollment of about 19,000, is located in Flagstaff 140 miles north of Phoenix in the picturesque high country of northern Arizona. NAU has earned a solid reputation as a comprehensive university with a personal touch. Its primary focus is undergraduate education enhanced by graduate education and research as well as distance learning. In terms of impacting the world at large, NAU holds its own with any university. In fact, in some of the hottest fields of environmental and biological research, the Mountain campus is leading the way, thanks to the university's breakthroughs in the fields of renewable energy, sustainable systems and biological sciences. In all of these fields, the university has garnered national and international acclaim. More information on Northern Arizona University can be found on its web site at: www.nau.edu.