BURNLEY, U.K. — The Burnley Football Club was put to the test recently with a match against Manchester United, and the home team playing at Turf Moor stadium scored a David-vs.-Goliath upset victory. That meant the stadium’s recently-upgraded PA system would also need to overcome a worthy opponent — the roar of an excited home-team crowd.
Designed by AMS Acoustics and installed by ETA Sound, the PA/VA compliant system was the first deployment of Harman HiQnet System Architect V 2.0. It also featured components from Harman Professional brands including JBL, Crown and BSS Audio.
AMS Acoustics had already implemented an earlier upgrade last season to bring three stands into VA compliance. During the course of this exercise the capture of a full range of measurements was required and the resultant data, after analysis, was used as the cornerstone for an entirely new design the following year. During the short closed season, AMS returned with ETA Sound to implant a complete Harman Pro solution, using a fiber-based signal network that would extend to the three main stands — the North (James Hargreaves) stand, the East (Jimmy McIlroy) stand and South (Bob Lord) stand.
Tasked with supplying a voice alarm-compliant system with high STI (Speech Transmission Index), AMS Acoustics’ project designer Helen Goddard made her product selection with care. Her design enabled the voice evacuation system to double up to meet on-pitch entertainment requirements. The company needed to achieve peak level in an emergency scenario, related to crowd noise. “We knew the system would have to achieve a maximum of 102-105dB(A) and this meant we needed to use loudspeakers that would be able to achieve these kind of levels without going into compression,” Goddard said.
First, the JBL loudspeakers were set a number of challenges — including a performance evaluation in AMS Acoustics’ anechoic chamber, even to the point of a destruction test. This was supported by Sound Technology, the Harman Professional distributors, who provided all the necessary backup. The acousticians then set about designing the control, signal path and zoning matrix, opting for an integrated Harman Professional package based on system optimization and cost-efficiency. “As the budget was quite tight this was the logical way to go,” said Goddard.
Crown CTs amplifiers, fitted PIP-USP3 speaker processing units, BSS Audio Soundweb London DSP devices, with BLU-link, running on a fiber backbone — and independent HP ProCurve network switches across all rack locations — form the system architecture. Media converters are provided for the BLU-link data and HP GBICS-LC, providing fiber interfacing on the HP ProCurve switches, and the infrastructure provides one dual redundant Ethernet network as well as an independent ring for the BSS Audio BLU-Link audio transport.
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In this fully-redundant design, UPS systems provide all the power conditioning and mains support in the event of a power failure. The installation was also notable for the DSP programming skills of ID Networks’ Martin Barbour, using the attributes of Harman Professional’s new System Architect v2.00 software — the first use anywhere in the world. “Given that this was a fast fit job, it saved me huge amounts of time,” Barbour said.
Eddie Thomas of ETA Sound worked closely with Tom Williams, Sound Technology’s acoustician, who had been closely involved from the outset of the project — taking part in the initial concept discussions with AMS Acoustics, supporting the equipment testing and measurement procedures, setting up the load monitoring, and finally assisting with system commissioning.
In total, 16 JBL AM6315/95 (90° x 50°) full range loudspeakers with rotatable horn and 12 AM6200/95 mid-high loudspeakers were used:
- In the South Stand, JBL AM6315s were used, mounted horizontally to counteract sightline restrictions, with the horn rotated.
- Covering the East stand are three clusters, each with JBL AM6315/95 in the vertical plane and JBL AM6200/64 covering the lower raked seating (90°x 50°).
- In the North stand there are five similar clusters of the same, with the JBL AM6315/95 mounted at the top in the vertical plane, and JBL AM6200/64 bolted under to cover the lower rake.
- An additional four JBL AM6200/64s (60°x40°) are also suspended on the north stand, specifically to provide pitch coverage.
Each of the three equipment rack locations features two HP ProCurve switches, two BSS Audio Soundweb London BLU-160 DSP’s and Socomec UPS in each room (as well as the two fiber converter interfaces for BLU-Link). “Two BLU-160s in each location gives us more than enough DSP — they are hugely powerful devices,” Barbour said.
The network services a total of 23 PA zones, although these are logically broken down into stands, concourses and turnstile areas. The BSS Audio Ausio Soundweb London devices are configured for a maximum of 72 outputs and between 24 inputs.
“Originally this was to have been a CAT5 installation, but when the client moved the rack locations, this took us outside the Ethernet 100m range — so we suddenly had to rethink the networking aspect,” said Barbour. Thomas’s team at ETA Sound then designed and arranged a fiber network to be provided and installed within two weeks.
“Installing BLU-Link at this stage provides us with the audio routing headroom we need when the expansion works commence,” Barbour said. “The channel count and ease of use made it an obvious decision.”
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The majority of London Architect’s Logic programming is dedicated to the graphical user interface and voice evacuation autonomy, which is permanently monitored. This allows any of the evacuation messages or microphones to be routed to any of the PA zones, while in each rack location there are also local access microphones as a final tier of security. Each output has its own independent gains and EQ with three volume settings — low (dropping the system down to 85dB), match day level (which runs at 100dB) and the emergency maximum level (of 102-105dBA).
Barbour added that running both the new London Architect v2.06 and Harman HiQnet System Architect v2 software offered huge advantages. A notable feature of the new Soundweb system designer is the Wire Tags feature. “This feature comes into its own with complex and vast DSP or Logic designs. It enables me to keep the design tidy, easy to follow, and when used in combination with macros, easily expandable.
“And in terms of stability and performance you don’t get any more pressure than a visit from Manchester United FC on your opening home game, with the world’s first System Architect v2.0 install,” Barbour added. “The system performed flawlessly, and thanks to the time saving attributes of both software applications, we were able to fit the demands to the very tight deadlines.”
His adoption of the new System Architect software was the result of having been engaged as a Harman Pro developer partner for the past 12 months. “So we knew well ahead of time what SDIG was planning with its upcoming version of System Architect,” he said.
However, it wasn’t until final beta testing during June / July, where he saw their work in a tangible form, that it became obvious how suited this major update would be for an upcoming stadium project, which had an extremely tight time scale.
“I presented the idea of using System Architect v2.0 on the Burnley FC project to Adam Holladay at SDIG who helped by providing an interface with the R&D team as we ironed out some small issues,” he said. “As the driving force behind the new workflow based approach to System Architect, Adam was best placed to translate my observations and comments in to some last-minute enhancements ready for the final release.
“During the design stage, my first impressions were that the user interface was more refined and it was obvious that a great deal of thought had been put into how the software would be used. The new layout guides you through a number of basic steps in much the same way that a software configuration wizard could but without the restrictions often associated with multiple choice Q&A based setup guides.
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“With the new workflow-based design approach of System Architect v2.0 we can associate the amplifier channels with physical and logical areas within the venue. This allows the software to automatically create default control panels for each logical zone, which would otherwise have had to be built manually.”
System Architect was used to configure the CTs amplifiers across three rack rooms covering three stands and the pitch. Each stand is divided into a number of zones depending upon its size and we were able to quickly build up a collection of panels for either complete stand or zoned control to aid with system setup and commissioning. Multi-parameter assignments and filtering controls allowed us to implement global buttons to activate each of the fault monitoring status reports which was far quicker than going in to each amplifier and activating these controls manually.
What this provided was a topographical view of the venue in a logical form with direct access to a simple user control panel for every area of the venue. Devices are contained in representations of the real rack rooms and individual DSP or amplifier channels are associated with the correct parts of the venue, all without manually building any control panels or links. “This approach basically takes away lots of the legwork required to achieve simple and consistent room control for distributed audio systems,” he said.
Many other features, already found in prior releases of System Architect, have also been reworked — including the ability to associate many parameters with custom controls. This has been made more user friendly through easy access to all devices and new filtering controls.
“We now have a great starting point upon which we can build as the stadium develops further over the next 12 to 24 months,” said Barbour.
“The exciting thing about System Architect v2 is not just what they have now, but what they have laid the foundations for in the future,” he added. “System Architect v2 approaches system design with a new perspective, it replaces the need to manually translate physical devices to logical areas. It subtly guides you to a common starting point where you have full access to the critical controls for your venue. It makes the creation of more complete and user-friendly control interfaces faster and more efficient.
“In fact, if Harman Pro continue to make such significant time saving upgrades in each major release, I’m going to have to start finding more projects to keep me busy.”
For more information, please visit www.harman.com.
