The installation was carried out by the experienced, UK-based TG Baker (Sound) under the supervision of project manager Tony Mott. The system was sold by Sound Technology, Harman Professional's distributor in the UK and ROI, who also provided technical assistance via its project support services.
The Aviva Stadium installation is a fully compliant public address-voice alarm (PAVA) system that is massive in scale, with 26 42-U equipment racks, 118 PAVA zones, 59 paging zones and 365 loudspeaker circuits. It has an audio matrix of 172 inputs and 468 outputs, with spare capacity for future input/output expansion. The system was designed to deliver a high speech transmission index (STI), an indication of speech intelligibility, along with a broadband SPL of more than 105dB and speech SPL of more than 101dB.
"During the proposal stage we considered a number of loudspeaker options," Mott said. "However, having successfully used the PD Series on other stadium projects we knew we could demonstrate to the client that the sound system would meet the performance requirements detailed in the specification." To fulfill the design, Mott selected JBL PD Series loudspeakers, and by using custom brackets, a variety of speaker orientations and careful attention to directivity control, he was able to achieve uniform sound coverage to virtually every seat in the stadium.
(Jim Evans)
