Project Outline
St. Paul’s Academy is a mixed Roman Catholic secondary school located in Abbey Wood, southeast London. With around 1,200 students, this is a large school site with one central multi-storey. Our brief for this project was to provide a site wide (internal and external) academy sound system solution to improve site communication (school tannoy) and to provide scheduled class change (PIP’s) alerts throughout the school day. The system should also provide priority based ‘lockdown’ audio message playout to support security and incident management plans.
Our audio academy sound system design solution utilised both traditional and IP audio technology to deliver user and management flexibility via a multi-zone system. Connected to the school LAN, the rack-mount audio system equipment was installed with a central 16 x zone audio processor / matrix. This unit was configured with the various inputs, outputs as well as the zonal, DSP, priorities and audio routing details.
Security and ‘lockdown’ was integrated to the academy sound system by using a series of dedicated lockdown wall buttons. These button units are designed specifically with a protective front hinge lid to prevent accidental pressing. The lockdown buttons were installed at strategically positioned points as directed by the school management.
Audio Applications
- Public Address (PA) / Tannoy
- SIP / VoIP Integration
- iOS/Android Paging App
- Background Music (BGM)
- ‘Lockdown’ / Mass Notification
- Class Change / PIP’s
Audio Specification & Technologies
- Network / LAN, IP 16 x Audio Matrix Processor
- Network / LAN, IP Power amplifiers
- SIP VoIP integration / SIP Gateway
- ‘Lockdown’ – Dedicated wall buttons
Installation Details
To provide zone based playout, music selection and volume control (audio processing and routing control), we installed an IP/network based audio matrix. This unit is accessed, configured and controlled via the LAN/network and provides the primary controls for mixing, pre-amplification, DSP, input-output routing and zone volume controls.
High impedance, 100v line speakers (wide frequency range, 2-way for music), were installed throughout. Careful consideration was also made to speaker choice to reflect any local challenges or concerns for water ingress (eg. outdoors or any areas that would be subjected to water).
The audio system was configured to interface with the site SIP telephony service. This integration allowed users to ‘call’ into the system to make audio broadcast / tannoy announcements from desk phones and mobiles. In addition, tannoy announcements via a mobile app was enabled using a wifi tannoy gateway. This allows users to make tannoy announcements from their wifi connected smart phones or tablets.
The academy sound system was configured to include scheduled Class Change / PIP’s. A series of MP3’s audio tones/messages and music files were created with the customer and uploaded to the system. Class change tones with an interlude of music was scheduled for playout during class change periods. The music choice was carefully selected by the school management to help keep the students calm with less noise during these class change periods (at least that was the theory!).
