AUDIO
HARMAN
SPURRING
FANS ON
Sound is a hugely important part of the fan experience.
For Tottenham Hotspur, creating an atmosphere that
would drive supporters to get behind the players was
key to its audio requirements at the club’s new stadium
us to use the Soundcraft mixing console to route
audio through to the stadium clusters and to provide
the full production quality.”
“Harman came to us with a concept speaker
that eventually became known as the VLA-C. The
club worked with the company to turn that into
reality,” says Ollie Levy, director of AVN Solutions.
“The atmosphere from the fans in this stadium is
phenomenal. The VLA-C certainly adds to it before
the game, during half time and post-match. The
sound brings it all together.”
“Harman is one of the only brands and partners
we have in all areas of the stadium,” adds Jones. “That
means in all of our general admission spaces but also
across all of our hospitality spaces as well. We tried to
do our premium spaces in a very different way to other
sports and entertainment venues. We’ve really tried to
set a new standard and, within that, bringing the sound
and the vision to life is a key way of adding value to
that experiences.”
“VLA-C for stadium spaces builds on some of
the component loudspeaker parts that are used for the
VTX large-format touring line array,” says Ben Todd,
application engineering manager at Sound Technology
Ltd. “VLA-C takes those parts and compacts them into
a weatherized stadium-specific loudspeaker that keeps
those qualities we want in the big tour sound product
but makes it much more suitable for the stadium
market. It uses horn-loading, for example, to ensure
we cover very tight areas very efficiently and that
we maximize the intelligibility of the system.”
“The JBL VLA-C2100 speaker has exceeded
our expectations in both sound-pressure level and
intelligibility,” says Eddie Thomas, VP of special
projects at SSE. “We have 156 cabinets arrayed over
18 clusters, and each of those clusters has got a threebox
low-frequency array behind it in a cardioid fashion
– two facing forwards and one facing backwards.
“We used a network with the Dante protocol on it to
talk to the Crown amplifiers,” he adds. “We developed,
ottenham Hotspur is one of the most
historic and prestigious clubs in football,
and it wanted an exceptional audio
experience to complement its newly
constructed 62,000-capacity stadium
that opened in April 2019. The state-of-the-art sports
and entertainment venue would feature a wide range
of luxury amenities, including an innovative retractable
pitch and cutting-edge video screens.
Harman talked with several key members of the
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium design and integration
team to get their perspective of the project and how
the integration of the Harman audio solution was
selected and utilized.
“We wanted the stadium to be the best in the
world, and to deliver that we need the best products,
solutions, platforms and services,” says Fran Jones,
head of partnerships at Tottenham Hotspur. “We ran
a capabilities-led approach across all of the different
technology packages and identified Harman as the
lead in that category. Then we were able to bring
Harman on board as a partner.”
The stadium audio solution includes 156 JBL
VLA-C2100 two-way full-range loudspeakers, 54
JBL VLA-C125S subwoofers, 196 JBL AWC82 allweather
loudspeakers, 140 Crown DriveCore Install
amplifiers and more than 3,500 JBL Control Contractor
speakers installed across the facility. Audio is mixed
on a Soundcraft Vi1000 digital mixing console and
monitored via JBL LSR 305 powered studio monitors.
“This project was unique because the club had a
vision of making this stadium a benchmark and, with
respect to audio systems, the design intent was to have
a completely integrated system that meets all of the fan
experience requirements,” says Mark Murphy, associate
director at Vanguardia.
“The club’s desire was to really elevate the
production value within the stadium bowl, and
we’ve designed a fully integrated system to provide
the full fan experience. It has worked really well for
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