‘World’s oldest professional football club’ upgrades audio

The world’s oldest professional football club has upgraded the sound system at its stadium with Electro-Voice, Dynacord and Bosch equipment.

When Notts County, which was founded in 1862 and plays in England’s League Two, converted its Meadow Lane home into an all-seater stadium in the early 1990s, it purchased a second-hand sound system from another club.

But after 30 years, the solution was no longer fit for purpose, and fans were calling on Notts County to invest in better sound.

The club’s finance consultant, Martin Baker, says: “There were a variety of comments from fans. Some said the sound wasn’t clear, while others thought it was sometimes too loud and disappeared. It was just inconsistent, and we felt that it was difficult to engage properly with fans.”

The club had already installed large screens at Meadow Lane and could see the extra value that AV solutions can bring to a matchday experience. It saw the benefit of being able to combine these screens with superior stadium sound to do everything from helping to build the atmosphere before a game to showing on-pitch interviews.

Notts County enlisted the help of systems integrator UK Audio Engineering, which called on the support of the Electro-Voice and Dynacord UK office.

Arthur Achard, Electro-Voice and Dynacord senior sales manager, says: “We worked with the UK Audio Engineering team to design the system from the ground up. There were no drawings available for the stadium, so we measured all the stands, the step count and the height of the roof. From this, we could design acoustically what would fit best into the space we had.”

The design deploys 40 EVH1152D 15” two-way coaxial loudspeakers supplemented by 18 EVF2151D subwoofers. These are driven by five IPX10:8 and one IPX5:4 fixed-installation amplifiers, with processing and control via a pair of MXE5 Matrix Mix Engines.

Electro-Voice and Dynacord sales manager Richard Leadbitter says: “The MXE5 allows us to recall presets for different matchday situations, while the pro-sound solution is connected to the life-safety system via GPIO ports. There’s a lot of processing that goes on there that allows us to tune the system.”

Meadow Lane’s loudspeakers are controlled and monitored via SONICUE Sound System Software. “We worked with the end-user to give them a custom GUI for control,” says Leadbitter. “This gives them the control that they want, delivered in an easy-to-understand way.”

To ensure that all required safety standards were met, UK Audio Engineering recommended a Bosch Praesensa system that could directly connect into the pro sound system. “Praesensa takes care of all of the PA and any life-safety critical communications that need to be made,” says Achard.

UK Audio Engineering director Jordan Alderton says: “The sound quality is unrivalled in this league. You would have to go to the Premier League level to find something similar.”