Originally called the Portland Ice Arena, William B. Troubh Ice Arena (TIA) is a year-round arena with an NHL-sized rink, used by peewee hockey teams, The Portland Pirates, and the general public in between.
Located on Park Ave. in Portland, ME, TIA originally opened in 1984. When its audio system recently failed, they called SMS to overhaul their system, bringing high quality sound to the popular recreation space.
With five locker rooms and seating for more than 650 spectators, TIA is a big, echoey room. The challenge became designing and installing a system where audio sounds good everywhere—a challenge met with distributed audio. Today, the TIA sounds better than it has in decades—from any corner of the space.
At TIA, hourly- and daily- rentals make up a large part of the arena’s user base—which means a lot of different people find themselves at the controls on a regular basis. To solve for this, SMS designed an audio system optimized for a wide range of end users, making it easy to operate with little experience or guidance.