Whitaker Brothers North Chooses Bose Professional RoomMatch System for the Philadelphia Skating Club

	The Philadelphia Skating Club indoor facility, featuring a Bose RoomMatch loudspeaker system.

The Philadelphia Skating Club has been a locus for family entertainment for generations. Founded in 1849 as the Philadelphia Skating Club & Humane Society, the Philadelphia Skating Club has been in its current year-round indoor location since 1938. There it has hosted events including several North American Figure Skating Championships and has been home to world-class champions including skating legends Dick Button and Scott Hamilton. The venue now also has its second Bose Professional sound system, made up of Bose RoomMatch components, installed in time to host the USFSA Eastern 2018 Adult Sectional Figure Skating Championships, March 9 - 11. The installation of the new system was supervised by Sean Whitaker of AV systems integrator Whitaker Brothers North, Inc. The new system follows a Bose 802 Series IV Panaray sound system that had been in place since 2002 and installed by his father, Kevin Whitaker, Sr.

"The Bose 802 system was great for its time, and it really served the skate rink very well for well over a decade," says Kevin Whitaker, Sr. "When it came time for the next generation of sound technology there, the skate club came back to us, where we had a new generation of people and systems waiting!" The new Bose RoomMatch system consists of 10 Bose RoomMatch Utility RMU108 loudspeakers and two Bose MB210 subwoofers. Four of the RoomMatch Utility speakers are flown above the ice with the subs above and below them in a single cluster, 30' above the ice. These are powered by two Bose PowerMatch PM4500N networked amplified controllers, and managed using the Bose ControlSpace ESP-00 engineered sound processor. In addition, two Bose FreeSpace DS 100SE surface-mount loudspeakers, powered by a PowerMatch PM4500 amplified controller, are installed in the rink's second-floor club room.

The RoomMatch system in the skating rink was designed with the help of Bose field personnel, and reflects the level of assistance Bose engineers routinely make available to installers and their customers. "The rink has very different levels of activity from one part of the day to the next," says Whitaker, citing students and novices learning the basics of figure skating in the mornings, more serious and advanced skaters during afternoon sessions, and an open mix of different levels after 5:00pm. The sound has to cover the entire venue appropriately as the mix of users changes, while also reflecting the wide range of music styles that figure skating embraces, from classical to hip-hop. The RoomMatch does this consistently and effectively, says Whitaker. "The center cluster configuration accomplishes everything we needed, including very present low-frequency response from the MB210 subs," he says. "That's one of the reasons that the Philadelphia Skating Club has had a Bose system in place for so long -- they're not just getting a sound system, they're getting an entire engineering support team, between us and Bose."

In fact, when the new system was being installed over four days at the end of February, a Bose L1 compact portable system was put in place temporarily to provide music until the new system was commissioned. "Bose never missed a beat," says Whitaker.

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