Nestled amid the towering peaks of the front range in Estes Park, Colorado and
surrounded on three sides by Rocky Mountain National Park, the YMCA of the
Rockies is as beautiful a place to have a conference, reunion, or getaway as one
can find this side of the Pearly Gates. And those conferences, reunions, or getaways
need not be small by any stretch; the sprawling grounds include nine hundred
lodging rooms and nearly sixty meeting rooms, including the six hundred-plus-seat
Walter G. Reusch Auditorium. Recently, Sight and Sound Technologies (Colorado
Springs, Colorado) replaced the auditorium’s aging sound reinforcement system
with new, crystal-clear, high-impact Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and
subwoofers.

“When I told her I was replacing a sound system at YMCA of the Rockies, my mom
got excited because she had gone to camp there when she was young,’ said Kris
Johnson, COO of Sight and Sound Technologies and the lead designer and installer
on the project.

As it happened, YMCA officials had already been considering a Danley system for
the Reusch Auditorium. “They had rented a smaller portable Danley system for an
event in a smaller room, and they were blown away by its clarity,’ explained
Johnson. “And even after we had settled on the design for the new system, they
wanted the speakers shipped directly to them to use for an event before we could
fly them!’

Two Danley SH-96s flown at each end of the 25-foot stage deliver stereo coverage
for most of the room. Underneath each, a smaller Danley SH-95 provides modest
front-fill. Two Danley TH-118 subwoofers round out the low end from the floor, one
on either side of the stage. The YMCA’s building and grounds department will build
enclosures for the subwoofers to protect them from people walking past. One beefy
four-channel Danley DNA 20k4 Pro amplifier powers the SH-96s and subwoofers,
and a smaller four-channel DNA 5k4c amplifier powers the SH-95s. A Yamaha MTX3
processor provides front-end processing and routing logic, and on-board processing
on the Danley amplifiers provides loudspeaker conditioning. An existing Beringer
x32 mixing console serves as the operator control for the whole system.

In addition to the sound system, Sight and Sound Technologies added an Atlona
Video matrix switcher, three Hitachi projectors, and two Da-Lite electric side
screens. The existing centre screen was still in excellent shape. However, to
facilitate control of the entire system, Johnson relocated its controls to the FOH
position, where all of the sound, video, and lighting controls now reside.

“They love their new Danley sound system,’ said Johnson. “I was playing some
music I was familiar with when I tuned it up. They got excited and asked to play
their own music, and of course I obliged. Everybody had the biggest smile; they
were loving life!’