HSBC Arena
NHL - Sabres
Buffalo, New York

Seat Count: 18,595 seats on four levels
Project Type: New Construction
Opening: September 1996
Construction Budget: $127.5 million
Architect: Ellerbe Becket, Kansas City,
Missouri
AD Scope: Audio Design

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HSBC Arena was constructed as the home of the Buffalo Sabres; however, the arena also hosts the Buffalo Bandits of the Major Indoor Lacrosse League, Roller Hockey International's Buffalo Wings, and the National Professional Soccer Leagues's Buffalo Blizzard, in addition to college basketball, concerts, ice shows, the circus and other family events. The Arena hosted over 150 events during its first year of operation.

Originally, AD designed a distributed sound system for the arena, but distributed systems are costly, and the client needed another option to stay within the given budget. A center cluster solution was chosen. Arenas are generally very live acoustically. The challenge with a center cluster in an arena is that the reflective surfaces—which create an atmosphere of excitement that supports the crowd in a sporting event—cause echoes during concerts and other types of events. We worked with the owner's preferred manufacturer to develop a customized loudspeaker cluster with very tight pattern control to provide sound coverage in the seating areas while keeping as much energy as possible off the walls.

Computer modeling allowed us to design coverage that was even across the seating areas.