Celtic Park in Glasgow, the home of Celtic Football Club, has recently upgraded the electronics for its main PA to an all Dynacord signal chain. Technical advances in A/V mean that venues often don’t need entirely new systems to upgrade their audio performance – sometimes incremental improvements to their electronics will provide a significant boost to a venue’s audio capabilities.
The 60,000-seat Celtic Park stadium received a full audio refit in 2017 to enhance the audio coverage in the main bowl. This inluded the installation of Electro-Voice EVH and EVF loudspeakers driven and processed by Electro-Voice CPS amplifiers and NetMax digital matrix controllers. While the system still performs well, technology has moved on over the past eight years and, with significant advantages in efficiency and performance to available, Celtic returned to integration partner, North, to seek advice.
The weatherised loudspeakers were still in good condition, so the decision was made to focus on the electronic backbone of the system. North recommended new amplifiers based on the solution installed at Fulham’s Craven Cottage. The West London stadium features the same EVH loudspeakers as Celtic Park, but driven by IPX amplifiers.
‘The difference in performance for the EVH loudspeakers is amazing,’ explains Dynacord Sales Manager, Richard Leadbitter. ‘You have much more readily available power and the processing on them gives a marked improvement in clarity and control’
The Celtic Park upgrade has seen the installation of 13 IPX 10:8 DSP amplifiers alongside a pair of IPX 5:4 DSP amplifiers. These improve efficiency and processing power to drive the existing 52 EVH and 60 EVF loudspeakers flown around the stadium bowl. The IPX Series offers an extremely high power density of up to 20kW from a single amplifier thanks to a number of proprietary Dynacord amplifier technologies. It also features integrated networking (Dante audio and OCA/AES70 control) and can be fully configured, controlled and operated by SoniCue Sound System Software.
The main advantage that Celtic has received from the amplifier upgrade is reduced energy costs through increased efficiency. ‘The club was aware that they would need to upgrade their sound system at some point, and when we showed them how much they could save with IPX in terms of energy costs, they knew it would be beneficial for them,’ Leadbitter says. ‘They would always have to replace the amps at some point, so they made the decision that they should get it done quickly so they could reduce their carbon footprint and start saving money.’
Celtic Park achieved this saving through Dynacord’s ecoRAIL technology. This dramatically reduces idle power consumption of the IPX series, while maintaining audio output, full system supervision and the capacity to restore full output power without delay. When playing background music or pilot tone or when the system is in idle mode, power consumption may be reduced by more than 50 per cent, all while the amp stays active and fully functional.
The new technology has also allowed additional savings for the club by reducing its overall UPS requirement by 50 per cent. This further helps Celtic reach the Carbon Footprint goal of being the first ‘green’ club in the UK.
Further audio routing and control is added with a redundant pair of MXE5 Matrix Mix Engines. These performance audio matrices, combined with SoniCue Sound System Software have enabled a greater level of user control to be delivered with custom GUIs that offer various presets for aspects such as match days.
Headed by Commercial A/V and Pro Audio Consultant Jason Lee, the North team worked with the Dynacord team to create the custom GUI for Celtic Park and push the boundaries of the MXE5 matrices.
‘Using the in-built panel designer in SoniCue allowed North to create a professional-grade audio control interface without requiring advanced design skills,’ Lee says. ‘Being Icon driven, the custom GUI provides the operator a comprehensive dashboard with several key benefits for monitoring the PA/VA system, enhancing usability, efficiency and responsiveness. It provides real-time status updates for all analogue and Dante signal routing, loudspeaker zone status, loudspeaker enclosure status, amplifier health, network connectivity and UPS monitoring across the stadium bowl, multiple rack locations and the matchday control room. In the event of an alert, the operator can quickly identify an issue by immediate visual alerts.’
Leadbitter is happy to see thisScotland’s largest football stadium develop its sound system: ‘Celtic Park is one of the loudest stadiums in the country, maybe even the world,’ he says. ‘When you have 60,000 fans in there, they are very loud soo you need top-quality, powerful audio to cut through. The upgraded PA is doing that perfectly well.’
More: www.dynacord.com
