ARENAS
Southampton FC - St Mary's
Southampton Football Club is currently an established team within the Premier League, the highest tier of English football. The club was formed in 1885 as St. Mary’s Church of England Young Men’s Association (hence the nickname ‘The Saints’).
In 2001 the club moved from their previous home ground (The Dell) and moved to a purpose built stadium with a capacity of over 32,000. T.G.Baker (Sound) provided the PAVA and Emergency Telephone Systems.
The Club recently engaged T.G.Baker (Sound) to update the PAVA system, with particular emphasis being placed on the stadium seating areas. The remit from the Club was to provide a ‘Best in Class’ system to help improve the match-day atmosphere.
The stadium now has a dual node, fully networked PAVA system compliant to BS5839 and BS7827. The installed solution consists of ASL PAVA Control equipment, Crown Power Amplifiers with JBL Full Range and 18" Subwoofer Loudspeakers.
During the installation, all stadium seating loudspeakers and cabling were replaced. This work was carried out by our engineers and at no time during the upgrade works was the stadium without its fully functional PAVA system.
Wolves FC – Molineux
Molineux was partially redeveloped in 2012 with T.G.Baker (Sound) carrying out the extensive works to the sound system within the new Stan Cullis Stand.
Two new PAVA racks were designed, manufactured and installed, connected to a bi-directional, dual redundant copper network, to link to the existing PAVA racks in each of the present three stands.
An additional 14 PAVA zones were created within the new stand covering two levels of concourses, home and away turnstiles, a museum, a megastore and extensive new hospitality areas all with PAVA and AV integration.
Induction loop systems were provided to all disabled viewing platforms and main banqueting areas together with a Baldwin Boxall Omni-Care disabled refuge system across all levels of the new Stan Cullis Stand.
Aviva Stadium – Dublin
The Aviva Stadium, Dublin is located on the site of the former Lansdowne Road Stadium, which was demolished in 2007. The stadium has an all seating capacity of 51,700 and is primarily used by the Irish Rugby Union national team and the Republic of Ireland football team. The stadium is Ireland's first, and only UEFA Elite Stadium and in 2011 hosted the Europa League Final between Portuguese sides Porto and Braga.
The stadium is a bowl shape with four tiers on three sides and a single tier at the northern end due to its proximity to local housing. During construction, T.G.Baker (Sound) installed a public address Voice alarm (PAVA) system that is compliant with BS5839 and BS7827 standards.
The stadium is segmented into 7 PAVA zones, and the sound system is evenly distributed between 25 PAVA racks with a dedicated fibre optic ring. The seating areas are all low impedance loudspeakers; 24 off JBL-PD743, four off JBL-PD5322, 61 off JBL-PD5200 and 16 off JBL-PD5125 subwoofers. Seating amplification is provided by Crown CTs3000 and I-Tech power amplifiers. Audio distribution is via 40 off BSS London Architect BLU160 fully configurable DSP units utilising BLU-Link technology which provides 256 audio channels of low latency, fault tolerant digital audio. All non-seating areas are covered by a distributed 100V PAVA system.
Overall the stadium has 61 PAVA paging zones with 180 inputs and 444 sub zone outputs, 2 off emergency zoned microphones, 2 off touch panel microphones for emergency use, evacuation and coded messages, reception paging microphone, local portable racks with PAVA cut-off and local music sources in the function suites to facilitate conferencing and match day requirements.
Finally, remote access via a secure VPN enables T.G.Baker (Sound) to fully access the sound system for support purposes.
Rotherham FC - New York Stadium
T.G.Baker (Sound) carried out a complete overhaul of the PAVA system at the New York Stadium in Yorkshire, home of Rotherham United FC (‘The Millers’) during the 2015-2016 season.
The system comprises of four networked PAVA racks, one per stand, with a bi-directional, dual redundant copper network serving a total of overall 17 PAVA zones with 36 monitored circuits, all in full compliance with BS5839.
The bowl solution comprises of JBL AWC ‘all-weather’ loudspeakers and Crown DriveCore Networked amplification with a network of Baldwin Boxall Vigil 2 ‘Evas’ routers controlling all of the 100v line voice alarm system functionality.
Manchester City - Etihad Arena
In the summer of 2015, the Etihad Stadium in Manchester was remodelled to provide an additional tier of seating to the South Stand, increasing capacity to 55,000.
Two new PAVA racks were designed, manufactured and installed, then integrated with the existing dual redundant fibre network, to link to the current PAVA racks in the East and West stands.
Seating coverage was acoustically modelled and re-designed using full-range Tannoy VQ series loudspeakers mounted on a new gantry using bespoke bracketry.
Internally the system caters for both public address announcements and high-quality music reproduction in the new 93:20 and Joe’s sports bars and refitted Legends Lounge.
Warrington Wolves - RLFC
T.G.Baker (Sound) was asked to provide a design proposal for the upgrade of the stadium PA at the Halliwell Jones Stadium in Warrington, home of the Warrington Wolves. The stadium had previously operated temporary pitch-side loudspeaker arrays to broadcast match-day entertainment programme, which had the inevitable consequence in large volume discrepancies between front and rear row seating areas.
T.G.Baker (Sound) designed and installed a stadium bowl PA, utilising a network of full-range all weather cabinet loudspeakers. To augment these and provide the extra low-end punch demanded from the modern match-day experience at the stadium, a scheme of weatherised sub-bass cabinets was also installed.
The stadium-wide PAVA system was also upgraded as part of these works to include new touchscreen paging facilities, as well as match-day concourse bar sound systems.
Bristol City FC - Ashton Gate Stadium
2015 saw an ambitious refurbishment of Ashton Gate stadium start to come to fruition. Spread across a three-phase project, first the South stand and then the West stand was demolished and rebuilt as a state of the art sports and hospitality venue was produced. T.G.Baker (Sound) was successful in their bid to provide the PA/VA system for the project, which saw a full new PA/VA system installed throughout the two new stands and integrating with legacy equipment throughout the rest of the stadium.
The first phase saw the construction of the new South Stand, into which was installed all-weather, full range cabinet loudspeakers, driven by efficient, DSP controlled power amplifiers. Inside, flexible lounge audio systems, allowing room combining and multi-input control were installed, as well as a complete PA/VA system covering all areas of the new build, including a premium sound system for the new flagship sports bar.
The second phase saw a refurbishment of the East stand concourse areas, while phase three saw the construction of the impressive new West Stand. Large format, full-range cabinet loudspeakers were installed, complete with bespoke bracketry, full weatherised finish, to provide coverage of the massive, two-tier structure, which was acoustically modelled before specification.
Internally, lounges were again provided with flexible, DSP controlled audio systems allowing function spaces to be combined or separated at the touch of a button, while all other areas were again covered by a multi-zone PA/VA system, controlled finally by a network of four racks connected by an optical fibre backbone. As with other installations, a topographical, multi-function touch screen controller enables the most user-friendly access to the system.
