OVERVIEW

The Premier League winning football club Arsenal FC were building a new stadium in North London, having outgrown the seating capacity at their existing home venue. The new stadium would have seats for 60,000 spectators. The state of the art new development would also have a wide range of facilities including; car parks, concourses, bars, restaurants, retail facilities and a museum.

AMS REMIT

Construction of the stadium began in 2004. AMS were brought onboard in 2005 by Honeywell to design a Voice Alarm and Public Address system to operate in all the public and staff areas. Many of the areas would be of high reverberation times, and due to nature of the use of the space, there would be high levels of background noise under occupied conditions. These were obstacles that AMS system design would have to overcome.

DESIGN TARGETS

The system would need to be able to provide high Sound Pressure Levels for speech, and a wide frequency response. Design targets also included achieving a uniform coverage throughout the stadium, and a minimum of 0.50 STI (Speech Transmission Index) across 95% of the seating area. All the VA areas would need to meet the current standards (BS 7827, BS 60849 and BS 5839).

COMMISSIONING RESULTS

The system manages an SPL of over 100dBA with speech as well as a wide and flat frequency response throughout the stadium. AMS used data from 192 measurement positions to calculate an average STI of 0.47 in unoccupied conditions (which would raise to above 0.50 in occupied conditions) as well as coverage at 4kHz that was within the +6,-0dB range across 100% of the area.

SUBJECTIVE RESULTS

"Emirates' glorious acoustics are shown off as the PA reads out the Arsenal team sheet for the first time" (The Guardian)