Wembley Stadium

Introduction

The Empire Stadium, as it was originally known, was built by architects Sir John Simpson and Maxwell Ayerton, and the engineer Sir Owen Williams. It was opened by King George V on 23rd April 1924, and was demolished in 2000 to make way for that which we see today.

In 1989 Steve Jones’ original firm BJAD was appointed as the engineering designer by Jim Griffiths, then of Travers Morgan, to design a house sound system which could and would be used by touring pop concert sound engineers to augment the stage system. Not that the stage systems could not produce enough sound energy, they could, but that was also the problem, the sound carried on and on into the neighbourhood. Steve’s design was to send the sound to the seats from the roof above, thus allowing the stage system could to be turned down and the environmental noise reduced by 6dB. In turn this allowed the Local Authority to grant a licence increasing the number of concerts from 3 to 12 per year, thus bringing exceptionally increased revenue to the stadium.

It was a world’s first for stadia – the first to use digital signal processing (DSP), the first to use fibre optic distribution of the audio signals, and the first house sound system to be used by all the concert sound engineers visiting the stadium.

Involvement

Whilst running BJAD, Steve was commissioned to carry out concept designs for the new Stadium in 1997. Later, in 1998 he sold BJAD to Symonds Travers Morgan and began working for them on the various projects, of which Wembley was one. Steve led the team of electro-acousticians who modelled the new stadium in computer simulation programmes which would predict the sound pressure levels and intelligibility of the various electro-acoustic design permutations.

The design was required to be “at least as good as the (1989) system in the old stadium” which, as the Stadium Director commented some years previously “has handled every weird and wonderful demand thrown at it”. As with the system in the old stadium, this one needed to handle all the paging and commentary associated with the sporting and music events. It also had to be the Voice Alarm associated with crowd control and emergency evacuation during fire and bomb threat conditions. Steve is an expert in what is known as PAVA design and is a member of the committees and technical working groups of BSI who write the Standards. His expertise is particularly concerned with designing systems used for “performance” sound to be also suitable as PAVA systems in terms of the requirements of the Standards.

From the electro-acoustics, the design grew through the DSP electronics and amplification through to the touchscreen control system. The equipment needed to be even more diversely located – 30+ rack locations rather than the 12 in the old stadium. This enabled the loudspeaker cable runs to be kept suitable short, especially for the high power speakers in the roof serving the majority of the seating area.

By 2000 the specification had been written and the design drawings marked up ready for competitive tender and a budget established for this package of works. The construction work continued apace and eventually the electronics packages were put out to tender. Steve handed over responsibility for seeing the project through to a senior member of the team, James Hurst.

By the time the stadium opened in March 2007 (almost 10 years to the day since the first concept design meeting) Steve had decided to leave Capita Symonds (as it was by then known) and establish SJA. Steve now advises Wembley on technical operational matters, with special emphasis on the sound system.

Footnote: From his work on Wembley Stadium back in the late ‘80s, and in response to the Hillsborough Disaster, Steve established and chaired the inter-institutional technical working group which wrote the Code of Practice for the design of sound systems for emergency purposes in Sports Grounds, published in 1992, and subsequently becoming a British Standard in 1996.