A dozen miles northeast of downtown Las Vegas, the glitz fades and desolation begins. Welcome to the high desert of the
Great Basin — home to sagebrush, jackrabbits, and underground nuclear tests.

It’s vast, empty and still. Until... Suddenly, a deafening roar rolls across the desert and rumbles off nearby rocky peaks as a B-1 bomber lifts off from Nellis Air Force Base, afterburners blasting. Then squadrons of fighter aircraft rocket skyward, hour after hour, in a rasping chorus of ambient noise.

Right next door to Nellis, a group of Las Vegas entrepreneurs has poured about $200 million into constructing the world’s largest (and costliest) auto racing complex: the Las Vegas Motor Speedway (LVMS). When completed, the 1800-acre facility will comprise 24 race tracks to accommodate everything rom BMX bicycles to Formula One Grand Prix cars.

When completed, the 1800-acre facility will comprise 24 race tracks to accommodate everything rom BMX bicycles to Formula One Grand Prix cars. The crown jewel of the complex, a 1.75-mile tri-oval track with grandstand seating for 102,000, made its debut with a 300-mile Indy Racing League event in September of 1996.

The inaugural race thrilled fans with speeds of up to 229 MPH, and chilled them with 10 of the 28 cars entered in the race crashing on the fast track. That same day, the powerful, computer-controlled sound system at the Speedway produced sound levels of up to 117 dB SPL in the stands and did not crash.

But the race to get it designed, tested and installed is a suspenseful story in itself — complete with unprecedented performance expectations, difficult working conditions, and a frenzied construction pace typical of Las Vegas projects.

On the Pole..

Racing for Team A-Com... The initial sound system design was assigned to Ron Sauro of Northwest Audio and Acoustics in
Tacoma, WA, who had been referred to the Speedway owners on the basis of a system he had designed for the Hollywood Park horse track.

Once presented with the basic requirements for the system, Sauro
realized that he would need help in order to complete the full system design specification in the required time. He decided to concentrate on the challenging
specifics of loudspeaker coverage, and turned over the task of overall systems design and integration to Brian Gross of A-Com in Chantilly, Virginia.

In the early stages, Brian Gross of A-Com called on his friend Neil Shaw of Menlo Scientific Acoustics in Topanga, California to serve as a key technical advisor.

After A-Com was awarded the contract to supply and install the system, Gross enlisted the aid of Josh Thompson of Point Source (Las Vegas and Nashville) to serve as installation supervisor, with Chris Potter of Point Source working as the primary on-site coordinator.

Owners... and Great Expectations

The sprawling Las Vegas Motor Speedway complex is the brainchild of owner/operator Richie Clyne, with financial backing from the owners of two prominent Las Vegas casinos.

In Las Vegas the line between sports and entertainment is a fuzzy one at best, so it’s no surprise that the Speedway owners insisted on “concert quality” sound as a prerequisite for all spectator areas of the track.

That previously unheardof requirement eliminated the traditional approach of using huge, limitedbandwidth horn arrays.Also, ever mindful of income sources, the ownership wanted a system that could be heard throughout the entire race, so commercial announcements could
be clearly audible even when the race was going full bore — something virtually impossible at most other tracks.

Since the ambient noise level in the grandstands during an auto race was expected to approach 115 dB, the system had to be capable of uniform coverage at the same level or higher!

One more detail: The owners didn’t like the way the loudspeakers and light poles obscured spectator sight lines at other racing facilities. So, for most main grandstand areas at the Spreedway tri-oval, all light poles and speakers had to be placed BEHIND the spectators—which meant the sound had to be thrown even further because of the reverse slope of the seating area.

Using EASE electro-acoustic simulation software, Ron Sauro modeled dozens of different approaches using a variety of loudspeaker cabinet combinations at various spacings and articulations. “I could not have done this job without EASE,” he maintains.