It has been a long time since I have attended a BYU game in person at LES, but all these complaints about the sound in LES make me curious. The complaints about the sound quality in LES just do not add up.

Frist off, the Danley speakers that were used in the 2011 upgrade simply sound incredible by any standard. The Jerico (top boxes) horns are known for how well they throw (distance), great pattern control, FIDELITY, phase coherence, low distortion and being LOUD. The TH812 subs are some of the best on the market bar none. They are horn loaded, and capable of low frequency extension to legit sub 30 Hz of clean bass at insane SPL's. Second Danley speakers are not cheap. Third, Deward Timothy who designed the system currently in LES is a very good sound designer/engineer. When EV debuted their Line X line arrays for the big U2 world tour back in the 90's they flew Deward out as a consultant on how to set up and tune the rig. Fourth, the amount of total watts driving those boxes is an impressive 145K watts. Fifth that system was designed to project sound up to 1000 feet. LES is only about 750 ft long.

As the Mix magazine article points out the design of LES does not allow for many options in terms of sound system configurations. You could not use line arrays as there is no way to hang them without putting in some major sight obstructing beams in and the arrays would obstruct line of sight too. A point source horizontal array would cause major line of sight obstructions. You can not use a distributed system because once again there is no where to hang the speakers without putting up a lot of line of sight obstructing pillars/beams to hang them on. Then you have to deal with acoustical physics which cause limitations as well

The old pre 2011 system did a decent job but the low frequency extension left a great deal to be desired. The high frequency extension was all but non existent. The mids where most of the frequencies of the human voice are found were produced quite well by the old system, but there were some serious limitations to that system beyond reproducing the human voice.

My theory is that BYU had to limit the output of the system in terms of SPL and frequency due to complaints by people who live nearby and city ordinances. Perhaps they are not even using all of the big Jerrico horns in order to not make the near by residents mad. I would love to ask Deward what happened and why the system is not performing up to its potential. If I was still in that profession I would ask him.

Hopefully with more room for the sound system that will be provided by the new larger score/video board the engineers can use some of the newer technology to get more directivity out of the subs (the current subs are pretty good already) and to some how improve the coverage.

At the end of the day the system at LES when set up right, powered right and run/processed right is capable of a level of accuracy, fidelity, distortion, SPL and dispersion that is outstanding. I would love to know as Paul Harvey used to day "the rest of the story"