Community PA for Crandon Off-Road Raceway

Located west of Crandon, Wisconsin, USA, the Crandon International Off-Road Raceway is home to the World Championship Off-Road Races and hosts a variety of motor races, R/C races, concerts and other entertainment throughout the summer season.

Crandon’s previous audio system, which consisted of traditional public address paging horns, had difficulty overcoming the track’s noise levels and it had deteriorated over the years from exposure to Wisconsin weather.

The raceway contacted Kevin Mullins of Arrow AV Group in Appleton, Wisconsin for a quote on a new system. Mullins had provided live production for entertainment at the track, as well as serving as a flagger and spotter for motor races. He understood the challenges faced by the audio system and presented the venue with a design based on Community R-Series loudspeakers.

“We’ve used lots of Community for outdoor events and installations and I knew they would do a great job for Crandon,” says Mullins.

The system comprises 30 R.5HPTs located at spectator points around the raceway, at the bleachers and at the pit building. Four R.25-94TZ loudspeakers supplement the sound outside the concessions barn, while four Community Distributed Design Series DS5 surface-mount loudspeakers are installed inside the barn.

Electronics are installed in the announcement booth near the bleachers and include a Biamp Nexia DSP, which provides mixing and DSP services, and Shure wireless microphone systems. The system has five spectator zones and a press feed for racing network productions. Each zone has its own volume control. Arrow AV Group programmed the DSP with an AGC block to avoid amplifying motor noise when the cars pass by the announcer booth.