Why are the tiger stadium speakers so bad?

They do sound bad which is strange, they are Danley speakers. Danley has some of the worlds best loudspeakers, something went astray here.

I could hear better when I sat in the stadium club in the south end zone than when I sit in my regular south end zone seats in 416. I can’t understand much of anything in 416.

Captured by General Sherman when he reoccupied Fort Sumpter and gifted to the school.
They have too much historical value to replace at this point.

In West Upper you can’t hear shite. And the band makes no noise up there. I don’t understand why there’s no speakers in the south side of stadium and none in the uppers.

When I was a kid the old old sound system was fine even in the old upper deck.

Fix it.

Have been bad for years but all of a sudden last week (Ole Miss game) the sound was incredibly loud. I could hear it easily and at times it was too loud. Commented to my wife about it and she agreed. Wonder what changed?

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Is it the stadium acoustics?

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Yes. Long post ahead for anyone really interested in the acoustics..

There is a really nice Danley system built into the north scoreboard. This was a great location for the speakers prior to the construction of the south upper deck. The speakers fire across the field, and due to the shape of the stadium at the time the vast majority of reflections were bounced up and out away from the crowd.

Imagine the entire stadium were made of mirrors, and you sat on top of the north score board with a laser pointer. Prior to the south upper deck, most places you pointed the laser would not reflect back on the stadium. Even in places where the initial reflection (first reflection in acoustic terms) did bounce back to the stadium, the second reflection (the next bounce) almost certainly would not.

The south upper deck drastically changed that. Since the main “escape path” in the south endzone is now blocked, an enormous amount of sound is reflected back into the stadium. The impact on second and third reflections is even worse. Using the laser pointer test again - you could point the laser at the west lower bowl and bounce it to the bottom of the south upper deck and then hit the east upper deck (as an example).

This is a huge issue that really can’t be understated from a sound quality standpoint. Football stadiums are big. In the example I just gave, that second reflection probably travels a total of ~600 feet from the speaker, around the stadium, to the east uppers. But the direct sound from the speaker only travels ~200 feet. So the reflected sound arrives 400 ms after the direct sound. That’s nearly half a second, and it turns the sound into a garbled mess. Now add all of the other reflection pathways to the same listening position. The first reflection off the south upper to the east upper probably arrives ~300 ms after the direct sound. It should be clear why reflections are such a huge issue.

Turning up the volume doesn’t really fix it because you still have a garbled mess, it’s just louder.

There are two potential solutions to something like this:

1. If you’re going to stick with a point source system, you have to move it to a new location. But unfortunately, there’s not really anywhere that works as well as the north endzone worked previously. You could maybe build it into the base of the south uppers and then add supplemental speakers for the south uppers themselves.

2. You ditch the point source setup and go with distributed speakers around the stadium. This is probably the best solution but A) it’s extremely complex and B) it’s much harder to make work in outdoor stadiums compared to domes.

It’s complex because more speakers = more time alignment issues. Not just from reflections, but also from the multiple speakers. If you hear two speakers but one is 100’ further away, it’s going to be messy. So you try to position the speakers such that there isn’t much overlap between them. Then you use some audio delay tricks to compensate where you need to. (Example: If you delay the near speaker by 100 ms, the sound will arrive at the same time as the far speaker. But only for the locations that are exactly 100’ closer to the near speaker. So it’s tricky. This is what really big outdoor concerts do when you see stacks of speakers on the sides of the crowd, way in front of the stage. But it’s way easier to pull off when all speakers are pointed the same direction.)

The best way to prevent overlap is to have the speakers pointing outwards toward the stands from positions above the field. Which is why it’s much easier in domes. In an outdoor stadium you probably have to put them behind the fans pointing down toward the field, or you put them in the corners of the stadium firing across the stands.

Reflections are less of an issue because fans are much closer to the speakers on average, and sound dissipates with the square of distance. Meaning the direct sound will be much louder than the reflected sound.

Phew. That was a lot more than I planned to type.

TL;DR - the south upper deck fricked it up, and fixing it is actually quite complicated. It can be done but it will require significant investment.

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Something needs to be done

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Jordan Hare's system sounds amazing.

Hire a competent acoustic engineer. Shen Milsom & Wilke in Dallas is one of the best stadium acoustics consultants in the world. They can make it work, but I would expect a minimum fee of $2 million to test, evaluate, computer Sim, design and create a solution, with another $3 million in sound reinforcement construction.

Cheap, 3rd rate equipment, like the scoreboards.