Twickenham Stadium, the 82,000-seat home of the England Rugby Team, has undergone an extensive refit of its audio system, courtesy of DAS Audio loudspeakers and installation company Sysco. 168 Arco 24 speaker systems and 168 Artec 26 two-way loudspeakers were installed in a few short weeks to ensure the system would be ready for England’s Autumn Internationals.

Having recently completed the construction of the South Stand at Twickenham, it made sense for the Rugby Football Union (RFU) to upgrade the sound, by adding under-balcony loudspeakers for the entire stadium while fitting an audio system for the new stand.

Roland Hemming was Sysco’s project manager through the installation process.



“In 2000 Sysco installed a sound system at Twickenham,” he explains. “And they’ve been the incumbent supplier ever since. The RFU’s consultants, Vanguardia Consulting, specified what the stadium required in terms of power and coverage.

“The system was built to provide the audio for the crowd on match days, the commentary and the jingles. And it’s also part of the voice alarm system, in the event that the stadium needs to be evacuated. Previously there was an emergency separate system in the bowl that did just that. Now we’ve upgraded the main PA system to voice alarm standard. Twickenham is unusual in that it has two balconies, not just one. This meant that there were many more seats not covered by the roof-mounted loudspeakers and they had a clear requirement for additional coverage under the balconies.”

The decision to go with DAS was taken by the Sysco team.



“The DAS speakers weren’t originally specified by the consultants,” clarifies Hemming. “They specified a similar speaker but we found that the DAS speakers were able to perform to the specification they required but at a better price. DAS was also flexible with providing a modification to the Artec balcony speakers. We needed those speakers waterproof. And they were very flexible and quick in being able to do that.”

Another selling point for DAS was the ability to meet deadlines that were set in stone. In this case, the four Autumn International Test Matches, as England played host to the Pacific Islanders, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand on successive Saturdays in November.

“We made the decision to go with DAS in July, but the project didn’t get confirmed by the RFU until mid-August. We only had three months to put it in, which is a very short time. It absolutely had to be in place and working by the autumn Test Matches in November.”

DAS’ ability to demonstrate its speakers’ coverage was another huge selling point.
 
“One of the things that really sold it for DAS, other than it being a good price and the product doing what we wanted it to do with the modification, was Eva Argandoña,” explains Hemming. “She produced countless variations of EASE loudspeaker plots to demonstrate to the consultants that the system was going to do the job and how it was going to sound before it was installed. DAS’ responsiveness helped them win the contract.”

After the first Test Match of the autumn, won by England incidentally, the DAS speakers performed as predicted.

“On the first outing we had no comment from the client,” smiles Hemming, “which is exactly what we wanted.”

DAS Audio products are distributed in the UK by Sennheiser UK.

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