Good things come in threes: Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, home to the NHL Predators, has been named the top arena in the country by leading concert and touring industry trade publication Pollstar magazine three times, in 2014, 2017 and 2023. Making a good thing even better, the venue recently took delivery of its third DiGiCo audio console, a Quantum338, purchased and installed through Nashville-based Spectrum Sound, scoring an audio control “hat trick” that any NHL team would be proud of.
The Quantum338 joins two existing and upgraded DiGiCo SD12-96 desks, along with an SD-Rack, SD-MiNi Rack, D-Rack, and three SD-Nano Racks, all also sourced through Spectrum Sound. The Quantum338 has now taken over front-of-house duties at the venue, while one SD12 is used a router/hub/mixer for the broadcast control room and the other as a utility mixer, paired with the D-Rack and deployed as needed around the venue, including for mixing monitors at the band/stage platform. Two Orange Box MADI interfaces are also on the same very busy Optocore loop as the consoles and Racks.
Bridgestone Arena, which was also nominated for Pollstar’s 2024 Arena of the Year Award, has 15 consecutive and a total of 19 overall nominations for the magazine’s Arena of the Year Award. Its sound is a big part of its allure for show and events, and DiGiCo is an integral part of that. “We have had DiGiCo consoles here since 2018; they’ve become the standard for concerts everywhere and Nashville is the ultimate music town,” says Jacob Lutz, Director of Technical Operations for the Bridgestone Arena and Nashville Predators. “The Quantum338 is a game-changer for live music. And the SD12 consoles, which we upgraded to 96 inputs last year, have proven great at broadcast applications, as well, and since they’re all on the same fiber loop, they give us a high level of redundancy and unmatched connectivity if that’s ever needed.”
“One Orange Box lives in the Technical Operations Center, and the other is our tie-in to the broadcast-truck docks, and through that we can give the OB trucks any outputs they need at a moment’s notice,” he continues. “And when the broadcast is analog, as it is for Regional Sports Networks, the SD-MiNi Rack at our dock gives us plenty of connectivity. For larger shows, such as the NHL Draft, we can just hand off a MADI stream and they can take any audio sources they need from the house, including being able to route the intercom through that. The flexibility that the DiGiCo infrastructure offers us and our partners is incredible.”
The new Quantum338 is used for every Predators game: this being Music City, halftimes are mini concerts, as are other intermissions, and those have been graced in the past by performances by artists including Keith Urban, Vince Gill, Scott Stapp, Riley Green, and Australian hitmakers the Shepherds, the biggest band that the arena has had on stage during hockey games since its purchase of the Quantum console.
“We have an SD-Rack on the band stage that connects to the optical loop and everything plugs into that and it connects all the way back to front-of-house, broadcast, and anybody else who may need either a mix or individual stems of our performances,” says Lutz. “Most touring shows will bring their own FOH consoles—and many, if not most, of those turn out to be DiGiCo desks—but we have had more and bigger shows coming in here other than concerts, and the Quantum338 gives us the capabilities and functionality that we need to handle anything that the busiest arena in the world throws at us!”
For more information on Bridgestone Arena, visit www.bridgestonearena.com. Spectrum Sound can be found online at www.spectrumsound.net.
