When the New York Knicks basketball team ended a fifty-three year wait for an NBA championship by winning game five of the 2026 Finals against San Antonio Spurs, a spectacular and triumphant return to the team’s home city was never in doubt. An estimated two million people took to the streets to welcome their victorious team along the Canyon of Heroes parade route, which saw unprecedented scenes of celebration culminate in a symbolic presentation of the keys to New York at City Hall.
For an event of this magnitude, the delivery of powerful, reliable, crystal clear audio for speeches, music playback, and live performance is essential. Eastern Stage Productions of New York (ESP) was entrusted with the task of delivering audio production for this prestigious occasion, which featured a live performance from Alicia Keys – and supplied a CODA Audio system to meet the requirements.
ESP owner Bill Danilczyk explained the choice: “I chose the CODA Audio system for the Knicks celebration because of its clean and clear coherency, phase alignment, high output, and small footprint, amongst other benefits. These features made it the perfect system to work with for an application like this.”
For what was a wide stage and audience area in front of City Hall, ESP deployed a CODA Audio system comprising ground-stacked and flown elements. The system was based around CODA’s flagship compact AiRAY line array. Part of CODA’s VCA family of seamlessly compatible loudspeakers (which also includes ViRAY and CiRAY), AiRAY brings together the high output of a large system with the flexibility of a compact system, making it the perfect fit for the widest possible variety of applications.
At the City Hall site, the two main hangs combined four AiRAY and six CiRAY units each, with two SCP-F sensor-controlled 2 x 18” subwoofers per side. These were complemented by further 7 ground stacks of three AiRAY with a single SC2-F sensor-controlled 2 x 15” bass extension each. Completing the system were four HOPS8T (high output point source) as fills for the dais, two HOPS8 as backstage fills, two HOPS12 as centre fills, eight ultra-compact CODA N-RAY line array units to cover the side seating area, with a further 10 SCP-F deployed for even low-end coverage. Onstage monitoring was catered for with six CUE FOUR 3-way stage monitors, and the whole system was powered by 12 CODA Audio LINUS14D 4-channel DSP amplifiers.
The Knicks Championship Parade proved to be an overwhelming success in every respect, including from a technical point of view. Amongst the many tributes paid to the team, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivered a memorable speech, before an uplifting performance from partisan New Yorker Alicia Keys left the huge crowd in raptures. The CODA Audio system ensured that everyone present enjoyed premium sound according to Bill Danilczyk: “The AiRAY loudspeakers combined with the SC2 low end extensions keep the PA warm, allowing the articulation of the mid-high drivers to sparkle. The SCP-F sensor-controlled subs are amazing! They are tight and deep, allowing the whole system to lock in – sonically, they are very smooth to the ear. CODA Audio continues to exceed my expectations time and time again for these large-scale, high-profile events.”
