Crypto.com Arena

Scope of Work: Design, Financial Modeling, Procurement,Construction Oversight.
Crypto.com Arena: LED Displays Systems, Integrated Digital and Static Signage, Distributed Line Array Sound System, Bowl Lighting System.

CUTTING-EDGE CENTER HUNG SCOREBOARD
AJP is proud to announce the completion of significant technology upgrades at Crypto.com Arena. Serving as the arena’s Technology Consultant and Owner’s Representative, AJP designed an innovative center-hung scoreboard that enhances the experience at Los Angeles Lakers, LA Kings, and Los Angeles Sparks games, as well as concerts and other live events at this iconic Southern California venue.

Anthony James Partners (AJP) transformed one of the world’s premier event venues with a groundbreaking 5,500-square-foot center-hung scoreboard. A key innovation is the adaptable underbelly displays, which can open or close, allowing rigging through the scoreboard to accommodate diverse event needs.

The scoreboard design features a continuous LED display with a 3.9-millimeter pixel pitch, measuring approximately 27 feet in height and 170.5 feet in circumference. For fans seated closer to the action, the bottom of the scoreboard includes four angled displays, each about 14 feet high by 16.5 feet wide, and a unique underbelly display facing the floor below. The underbelly display measures 18 feet by 18 feet with a 2.5-millimeter pixel spacing, offering additional graphics, animations, and exclusive content opportunities during events. A venue identification ring at the top of the scoreboard includes face-illuminating channel cut signage built into the building’s lighting system and controlled separately from the board.

This advanced display system supports variable content zoning, enabling multiple zones of digital content to be shown as needed for each event. It can display live video feeds, instant replays, statistics, game information, graphics, animations, and sponsorship messages.

AJP supported Crypto.com Arena through entire process, from design and financial modeling to procurement and construction management. The scoreboard project was awarded to Daktronics for manufacturing and install. Installation began on August 1, with a team of over 60 workers from various contractors, consultants, and building personnel. The team worked around the clock to meet the August 14 deadline, all while accommodating the arena’s busy schedule, including two high-profile concerts.

DISTRIBUTED LINE ARRAY SOUND SYSTEM / BOWL LIGHTING SYSTEM
AJP designs audio systems that deliver high performance and intelligibility for every type and size of venue. In an industry that tends to fall back on typical designs from the same manufacturers with no real depth of understanding in terms of the building and what it really needs, AJP takes the opposite approach, taking the time to determine the unique needs of each facility and project, identifying the best equipment and the best integrators, and designing systems that maximize the space.

Crypto.com Audio System Design – A Customized Approach
For the past decade, Crypto.com Arena (the former Staples Center) has been very successful with their JBL Harman-based system. Based on improvements made by the system manufacturer over the years, AJP saw no reason to change and designed a system using new upgraded JBL Harman products.

To design the system, AJP created a full acoustical model of the arena, including predictive modeling for performance of the selected loudspeaker system, as well as other potential systems within the space.

All Crypto.com Arena’s front of house control systems were refreshed, as well as new line arrays (JBL VTX series), subwoofers, and amplification for the bowl. The arena infrastructure was also upgraded to a fiber optic backbone for a dedicated audio network.

One big change in the new system involved the move of the front of house control to the DiGiCo Quantum Series mixing console, considered the industry standard in high-end mixing consoles. AJP’s system design maintained both BSS Harman processing and Crown amplifiers but upgraded to the I-Tech Series amplifiers made by Crown (which is also a Harman company).

With a focus on fan experience, a key design feature included the addition of a delay ring of JBL PD Series Loudspeakers for the arena bowl to enhance the audio experience for the patrons sitting in the upper deck. This did not exist prior to the new system design and constituted a major enhancement.

Like with every large-scale technology project AJP is involved with, the approach remains the same; a focus on time, attention, and a personal / customized approach to advance our clients to the next level. In addition to designing phenomenal systems, AJP negotiates excellent long-term service and warranty programming, and in the end saves customers significant dollars.

The system integrator awarded the project was 3G Productions (www.3glp.com).

AJP was also contracted to upgrade the bowl lighting system for Crypto.com in 2022.

“AJP played a key role as an Owner representative from the design, bid, award, installation and execution of our new audio system. Jack [Covert, AJP Director of Audio and AV Design Engineering] was instrumental in the overall process and we appreciate the partnership.“
Armen Dembekjian, Vice President, Events & Projects, Crypto.com Arena

www.livedesignonline.com
November 12, 2024

CRYPTO.COM ARENA UPGRADES JBL SOUND SYSTEM FOR VENUE RENOVATION

LOS ANGELES, CA — Crypto.com Arena is not simply one of the top sports and entertainment venues in the US, it is one of the best known throughout the world. As the home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, NHL’s LA Kings, and WNBA LA Sparks, sporting events are a constant, something that will get even more focus in 2028 when the arena hosts men’s and women’s gymnastics competition for the upcoming 2028 Olympic and Paralympic games. But Crypto.com Arena is also the home of the most popular music concerts and a multitude of other special events, including the annual GRAMMY Awards. The arena’s seating capacity of 20,000 (depending on the event), puts Crypto.com Arena above the average size for its class. It’s big and it’s busy.

Opened in 1999 as STAPLES Center, the flagship venue of AEG is the anchor of the L.A. LIVE sports and entertainment district in downtown Los Angeles residing adjacent to the Los Angeles Convention Center. Shortly after changing its name to Crypto.com Arena in late 2021, AEG embarked on a three-year major renovation to every public facing element of the venue, including a complete upgrade of its JBL loudspeaker system.

“Everything, top to bottom, is getting made over: private spaces, premium offerings, public areas, concessions, locker rooms, our scoreboards and video screens with an emphasis on our technology,” explains Armen Dembekjian, the arena’s Senior Vice President for Projects & Event Productions. “There’s something for everyone.”

JBL’s newest-generation VTX A-Series loudspeakers replaced the JBL VerTec® Series system installed more than a decade earlier. But the venue went considerably further in improving audience experience by adding upgraded and additional speakers to cover the top of the arena’s bowl.

The new system was the result of tight collaboration between HARMAN Professional and consulting firm Anthony James Partners (AJP) for its design, and HARMAN, AJP, and 3G Productions for its installation. “We did a very similar design to what was in the arena previously,” reports Jack Covert, AJP’s Vice President of Audio Engineering. “This allowed cost and structural work to be reduced by reusing rigging points and infrastructure originally installed for the VerTec system.”

The main system consists of 120 VTX A12 Dual 12-inch Line Array Loudspeakers, powered by Crown I-Tech 4x3500HD four-channel amplifiers. VLF content is supplied by 36 VTX B28 Arrayable Dual-18-inch Subwoofers driven by 18 Crown I-Tech 12000HD two-channel amplifiers. Speaker tuning and optimization are performed by DSP onboard the Crown amplifiers.

“A big change was the upper balcony system that had not existed before,” Covert reveals. “I went to an NBA game prior to designing the system and the place was jumping, but I went on the upper bowl and it was quiet up there. We put in a nice delay ring using JBL Precision Directivity boxes and it really made a big difference. We made sure the folks sitting in that area were getting their money’s worth.” Covert’s design used 36 JBL PD6322/95-FRP Dual 12-inch 3-Way Horn-Loaded Speakers powered by more I-Tech 4x3500HD amps.

The renovation is a massive project encompassing every part of the building and all of its amenities and facilities. One might think spreading a multi-year renovation would mean it could take place at a measured pace, but in fact, the biggest obstacle facing the system install was the arena’s jam-packed schedule of events, since Crypto.com Arena is the region’s most popular sports and entertainment destination, hosting more than 200 events annually. “One of the most interesting and significant aspects of the job was its constraints,” muses Jerrod Cring, Director of Systems Integration at 3G. “There was no scenario in which the arena could shut down for a month or even a week to facilitate a full-scale integration of the new sound system. So, everybody knew going into the project that working around the arena schedule was a prerequisite, and that we were all going to have to partner and collaborate to do it.”

Cring points out that, even with strong cooperation between all of the project’s contractors, the time crunch heightened the impact of dependencies. “There was electrical work that had to be done, there was low voltage work that had to be done, there was structural work that had to be done to support amp racks in the catwalks,” he lists off.

And then there was the biggest hurdle of all: availability of the equipment. As the renovation got underway the audio industry was still in the throes of supply chain delays caused by COVID, but JBL was able to deliver.

To thread this complicated needle, 3G drew on their production company roots and extensive experience working in the building on numerous concerts by touring music artists. Wiring harnesses and racks prepped at the company’s Las Vegas headquarters were transported to their LA office so they could be quickly loaded onto a truck, taken to the venue, and installed on short notice. “Going in and hanging a PA in the round in a couple of days, I mean, that’s not an event for us, that’s just your typical Wednesday,” chuckles Cring.

The ramifications of Crypto.com Arena’s packed schedule were further accommodated by one other difference between the VTX and VerTec systems. “From a maintenance perspective, if an amp went down in the old system, we had to lower the entire speaker cluster to access that one amp and fix it,” Dembekjian relates. “But there are periods where we’re going from event to event to event to event, and there’s no time to bring that array down. We want to be 100% operational safe at all times, not 97 or 93 or 90 percent.”

The issue cropped up because the old system employed an onboard amplification option, but VTX speakers are purely externally powered. “So AJP’s proposal changed the onboard amps being piggybacked on the speakers in the VerTec system to putting amps in racks on a catwalk. If an amp goes out, we can just go and troubleshoot or replace it without needing to wait for a day when the arena is dark to lower the cluster.” The substantial extra weight of these racks necessitated the structural work to the catwalk mentioned by Cring.

External powering also meant that, instead of running power and signal cables to the clusters it was now necessary to run loudspeaker cables. Again, the earlier install was able to be repurposed. “The challenge there was how to change to that heavier loudspeaker cable; there’s a lot more copper involved, compared to just the power for the amplifiers going up and down,” details Covert. “It turned out that the existing cable catch structure that the line arrays were suspended from was able to be reused. Not only did that work really well for the cable management, but it also brought some cost savings because it had been built right the first time.”

All hurdles overcome, the fully installed system successfully debuted at an NHL preseason game between the LA Kings and the Anaheim Ducks. “As big and important a venue as Crypto.com is, it was daunting when the project first landed on my desk,” Covert admits. “But all of the people involved pulled together as a good, solid team. Armen was on top of everything; he was one of the nicest and most knowledgeable people I’ve ever worked with in an arena like this, and the guys at 3G showed their stuff and did a good job on the integration side. Once we dug in and started working on it, it really, really came together and was a smooth process.”