After two years of sports and music events lost to the coronavirus pandemic, London’s 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium is preparing for its longest concert season yet. Driven by the need to remain world-class, the stadium is continuously being updated – including its audio systems.
‘One area that we knew would add value to our guests and clients was upgrading the bowl audio,’ says Stadium Director, Liam Boylan. ‘The previous system was not specifically designed to be used for the delivery of music and that was becoming increasingly apparent; we wanted to offer our clients a system that they would never consider not using.
‘We must be a stadium that artists want to use and fans want to go to, and to do that, you have to remain ahead of the curve and not rely on history alone. d&b offered a solution that would elevate the audio experience for all of our events, and thus keep our standards as high as possible.’
The brief was to ensure the sound delivered to Row 48, Level 5 is of equal quality to that delivered to Row 1, Level1. The system needed to appeal to both the music industry and sports organisations, and integrate with the existing network as part of the stadium’s safety system. Additionally, it needed to be lightweight in order to stay within roof loading limits,
‘With the d&b system, PA/VA compliance was a given, so instead of thinking about baseline intelligibility we could focus on performance quality expectations,’ says Mervyn Nock, Audio Visual Manager for The FA. ‘Before the installation, we rigged an array of d&b loudspeakers to give Wembley’s senior leadership team and various stakeholders an A/B comparison. The difference surpassed everyone’s expectations – not only was music much clearer, cleaner and brighter, but speech was more intelligible, more authoritative.’
Steve Jones, Head of d&b Education & Application Support for the EMEA, handledthe system design: ‘Because the Wembley bowl is so high and so steep, we needed to propose a single system that was up to the task of properly covering the large vertical geometry from front row to the back of the upper tiers, provide horizontal consistency and be suitable for both sports events and augmenting concert productions.
‘I’d be asking what would the system do when it was in sports mode, and what did that full coverage need to be; and then with, in effect, a smaller array formed from the top cabinets, check that we still had a system that could deliver concert sound levels into the top tier. My next consideration was informed by our observations of concert productions at Wembley; the best results involved the deployment of a ring delay system.’
Jones set about refining his design, moving between the venue’s two principal modes of operation, and began asking a different set of questions. ‘This was the lightbulb moment when I realised that for optimum performance from a single system, I needed to talk to Wembley’s technology consultants, Vanguardia, about the possibility to rotate the arrays and deploy them at an overall lower height, in the north and south stands. Eventually, after lots of toing and froing, we were able to define the arrays’ optimal height and position to do both sports and concerts really well.’
What Jones, in collaboration with Vanguardia, structural engineers OPS and integrator RG Jones has achieved, is more than a two-for-one solution. ‘Thanks to ArrayProcessing it’s now possible for Wembley to create upper and lower zones, and to easily offer multiple performance layouts,’ he explains. ‘And to switch from sports mode to concert mode without any compromise in quality.
‘There’s always been a strong partnership between UEFA and Wembley over the years, and they were pleased to see the d&b system installed and available to use for UEFA Euro 2020. During the championship, a 20m-long temporary press area was built over 6-8 seating rows and UEFA requested a lower sound level in this area; this was achieved by a reduction of as much as 12dB with spectators in front, behind and to the sides still experiencing the full sound level. It’s been invaluable.’
