St. Bonaventure University's Reilly Center Receives Danley Upgrade

	St. Bonaventure University in St. Bonaventure, New York

Nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, St. Bonaventure University (SBU) in St. Bonaventure, NY is one of the most beautiful campuses in the Northeastern United States. While St. Bonaventure is known as the nation's first Franciscan university, it is also known for its well-touted basketball programs. Just this year, the St. Bonaventure Bonnies were ranked as high as 16th in the Associated Press Men's Basketball Poll.

The Reilly Center at SBU is a 5,480-seat multi-purpose arena and is home to both the Bonnies men's and women's basketball teams. The Bonnies are tough to beat on any court, but they are particularly difficult to beat at home. In 2001, the facility was named "one of the five toughest places to play in college basketball" by ESPN's Jay Bilas.

Early in 2021, it was time for an upgrade to the facility's sound and AV system. "SBU contacted us with a request for proposal to design a new sound system for the Reilly Center," says Seth Waltz of AVL Designs, Inc. The scope of the project included high quality music and voice for basketball games, graduation, and other events in the arena. In addition, the facility needed new digital consoles, digital signal processing and connections for sports and news networks.

After visiting the facility, Waltz, along with lead designer Geoff Nichols, began working on the ideal speaker to meet the facility's needs.

"We needed high directivity and high-powered speakers for this project," says Nichols. "Each speaker was needed for a specific coverage area in a distributed cluster design. We also needed coverage to be designed with zoned software controls so they could utilize multiple orientations of the facility itself. We simulated many different arrangements with various manufacturer' products but arrived as Danley as the primary product for this project."

The project includes use of the Danley SH family of loudspeakers including the SH69 and SH96 as well as the GH60 and Danley's DBH218 for subs. Integration of the new installation was completed by Edward Simon & Co. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

"While the pandemic caused a lot of issues in terms of component delivery, we managed to keep the project on track to be open for the 2021 basketball season," says Skip Welch, director of sales and marketing at Danley Sound Labs. "One of the things Danley prides itself on is customer service and we worked diligently to make sure we could meet their needs in time."

"The installation, even with the pandemic-related delay, went smoothly and St. Bonaventure is extremely happy with their new system," says AVL Design's Seth Waltz. "Danley designs products that produce inherent sound quality as opposed to using DSP or filtering to fix problems. They sound clearer and more organic than many of the other products on the market today."

To hear the new sound system in person, SBU's women's basketball team will play the Saint Joseph's Hawks at Noon at the Reilly Center on January 1, 2022. The game will be available via livestream on ESPN+ or tickets can be purchased from their website.