The iconic home of the Milwaukee Brewers is a magnificent stadium with a moving roof, natural grass, and an extremely extensive state-of-the-art sound system.

Lewis Sound & Video did not win the installation bid, but based on our work as audio producers during the Brewers’ last season at County Stadium, we were hired to commission and tune the new sound systems. We did that before the park originally opened in 2001, and we were hired to operate the systems for every game and event during Miller Park’s first two years of operation.

Miller Park has a managed venue system built around a 64 x 64 Peavey MediaMatrix digital signal processor. It has a RAVE (routed audio over Ethernet) fiber-optic system running input signals from microphones and other sources throughout the park back to the matrix, and signals out from the matrix to speakers in the stands, concourses, offices and other areas of the park. There are independent sound systems in the bullpens and various clubs, but each of these can take a feed from the matrix to play the audio from the games.

Once the system was built, we came in with analyzers, equalized it, set up all the signal delays, then performed a great deal of fine tuning until the ideal sound was achieved throughout the venue. For instance, management wanted the national anthem, which is live, to be heard inside the 300 Club and Friday’s, but sending the same signal off the console that was being sent to the outdoor speakers resulted in an extremely dry sound. So our engineers decided to mix in some ambient mics installed throughout the stadium, giving the indoor areas more of a feeling of community with the crowd outside. We also added a delay going into Friday’s, because you could walk out of the restaurant onto concourses which were getting delayed sound. This way, it is all synced with the surrounding concourses.

“We were there when the president of the United States threw the first pitch on opening day at the new park,” says Henry Lewis. “We did every single game plus the pre-game hype and a lot of private tours. The whole first year there was just magic. The morale was higher than Everest. It was a wonderful place to be.”