The 4,500-capacity New Road cricket ground in England has sat upon the banks of the River Severn since 1896. Frequently referred to as one of the world’s most beautiful cricket grounds, the venue is home to Worcestershire County Cricket Club.
The club recently turned to AV integrator Hadleigh Technical Support (HTS) and distributor CUK Group for a new PA system that could provide clear announcements, music and entertainment across the site. An audio solution from Renkus-Heinz was chosen to keep New Road at the top of its game.
Mark Bromfield, director of system solution sales at CUK, says: “The ground needed a new PA system that covered all the seating areas, as well as the bars, food areas, car parks, practice nets and entrance areas. It also had to be installed at a high level due to flooding at the ground, which happens almost every year.
“They supplied a document from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for cricket ground specification performance, which offered guidance on how to integrate the system in a way that respected the ground.”
After a site inspection and a meeting with HTS, CUK Group set about specifying products that would meet the ECB and the cricket club’s requirements. “In order to produce EASE plots for every zone, we referred to architectural drawings of the different areas, which ensured that we achieved even coverage and SPL,” says Bromfield. “We wanted a solution that looked and sounded great – so we chose Renkus-Heinz.”
One of the EBC specifications was redundancy, and the club wanted to be able to control each zone independently. This led to HTS installing 94 loudspeakers across the ground, comprising 51 Renkus-Heinz UBX4s, 20 UBX8s, eight Audac HS208Ts and 15 Audac WX5020s to power 31 separate zones.
“Renkus-Heinz’s Passive UniBeam technology was a big reason why we opted for the UBX Series,” says Bromfield. “It offers products with asymmetrical dispersion and pan-and-tilt brackets. This allowed us to mount the loudspeakers at the rear of the seating area to achieve even coverage from the seats right to the front row.”
Renkus-Heinz’s UBX Series offers beam-steering technology in a passive column. Utilising neodymium 3” full-range drivers, the models have a small footprint. The narrow cabinet, combined with Passive UniBeam coverage, allows for surface mounting via the included wall-mount bracket, ensuring that they have little impact on the aesthetic.
Passive UniBeam technology addresses each transducer with specially designed all-pass filter networks, gain shading and additional frequency filtering. This generates an asymmetrical vertical dispersion with constant directivity, ensuring front-to-back coverage with minimal side-lobe artifacts.
The system at New Road is powered by eight Powersoft UNICA-2K8 amplifiers and controlled via two Symetrix Radius NX 12X8s and one Symetrix T-10 Glass.
The T-10 Glass allows the system to be switched to any zone for independent volume control, while also triggering messages and announcements. A redundant network ensures that if any issues occur, one network will remain operational, and the speakers will continue to cover their specific zone.
Bromfield says: “The system has given the ground even coverage and dispersion, and the fact that the loudspeakers are IP66-rated and utilise 100V taping made the installation even more seamless. The quality of the sound is amazing. I was impressed with the Renkus-Heinz system and what it has achieved. It was easy to set up and has given New Road a new lease of life.”