60 l March 2014
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installationfeature
Question is, will she have the chicken or the beef?
High-spec sound take-off
cleared for
Regulatory changes have had a significant impact on audio system design, but equally compelling has been the desire to create an inviting sonic landscape that encourages passengers to spend more time – and money – in the airport space, writes David Davies
NEW ANDemerging safety requirements such as EN 54-25 – a mandatory standard affecting fire detection and fire alarm systems – have been a
TRAIN IN VAIN...?
MANY OF the manufacturers who contributed to this piece also have notable stakes in other areas of the transport market, but contrary to what the casual observer might expect, there are actually plenty of differences in system design between airports and, say, hub-status railway stations. “Train stations have fewer zones than airports, but each zone is usually larger so you need a more powerful system with fewer zones,” says Graeme Harrison, executive vice-president of marketing, Biamp Systems. “They also need the capability of paging between stations, whether it’s the next stop down or at the end of the line.”
Sonically and operationally, railway stations can also prove to be a tougher challenge than airports. “Train stations are also more of an open-air environment, whereas airports are closed environments within structures. Messages could bleed into surrounding
major driver of A/V upgrade work in airports over the last few years, as regular readers of PSNEurope sister title Installation will be acutely
aware. But aside from this specific spur to action, it seems that airport audio has also been the subject of a more subtle shift.
With transport hubs deriving
Tannoy speakers were installed in Glasgow Central : railway
travellers’ needs can be different to the provision for air passengers
areas and could negatively impact residential areas around train stations,” remarks Harrison, who points to the ANC (ambient noise compensation) technology in Biamp’s Vocia system as one method of addressing the problem. Xavier Meynial, technical director of Active Audio, also highlights some
more specific challenges inherent to this environment – but makes it clear that there are compensating factors: “The environment is harsher in railway stations, both in terms of air pollution and electromagnetic pollution. On the other hand, visual integration is often more demanding in airports.”
more money than ever before from non-aeronautical sources such as retail, a significant part of the emphasis has been on generating a more appealing sonic landscape – in terms of both messaging and music – for travellers to pass through on their way to the gates. Max Lindsay-Johnson, international sales manager for Community Professional Loudspeakers (and, until recently, with Duran Audio), says: “Over the past few years there has been a mindshift [with regard to] airport installations with clients demanding a far more performance-based product to enhance the travel retail experience whilst also complying with VA requirements.” Given the penchant of the post-Norman Foster generation of architects for incorporating huge swathes of glass and concrete into their designs, this can be easier said than done. Beam-based speaker technologies that allow precise directivity of sound have done much to address the resulting acoustical issues, and many manufacturers now offer one variation or other of these approaches. But such solutions are not necessarily inexpensive, so with clients no less money- conscious than they ever were, audio suppliers have had to be highly conscious of the “performance and ease/speed of
“A future-
proofed system provides an airport with the ability to reconfigure around
construction, and add onto the system as construction is completed” Graeme Harrison, Biamp Systems
installation” balance observed by Lindsay-Johnson. To match every one of
Heathrow’s quintet of terminals, PSNEurope has selected five current trends which indicate that although they might not quite match the last two decades’ progress in
Photo: Courtesy of Tannoy
Photo: Shutterstock
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