Around the Wicket—Renkus-Heinz Keeps WCCC Atop Audio Game

The 4,500-capacity New Road cricket ground in Worcestershire, England—which opened its doors in 1896—is home to Worcestershire County Cricket Club (WCCC). The ground recently turned to audiovisual integrators Hadleigh Technical Support (HTS) and distributors CUK Group for a new PA system that could provide clear announcements, music, and entertainment across the site. A sound solution from Renkus-Heinz was chosen to keep New Road at the top of its game.

“HTS have a long-standing relationship with Worcestershire Cricket Ground,” explained Mark Bromfield, director of system solution sales at CUK. “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 (EBC) for cricket ground specification performance, which offered guidance on how to integrate the system in a way that respected the ground.”

After having site meetings with the end client and HTS, CUK Group set about specifying the correct products to meet not only the ECB but also WCCC’s requirements. “In order to produce EASE plots for every zone,” continued Bromfield, “We referred to architectural drawings of the different areas, which ensured that we achieved even coverage and SPL. We wanted a solution that looked and sounded great, so we chose Renkus-Heinz.”

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One of the EBC specifications for cricket ground performance was redundancy, and WCCC wanted to have control of each zone independently depending on the requirements of the event. This led to HTS installing a total of 94 loudspeakers across the cricket ground, comprising 51 Renkus-Heinz UBX4s, 20 UBX8s, eight Audac HS208T, and 15 Audac WX502O to power 31 separate zones.

“Renkus-Heinz’s Passive UniBeam technology was a big reason why we opted for the UBX Series. It offers products with asymmetrical dispersion and pan and tilt brackets, which was ideal for WCCC,” explained Bromfield. “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 revolutionary beam-steering technology in a passive column. Utilizing state-of-the-art neodymium 3-inch full-range drivers, the models deliver an incredibly small footprint. The narrow cabinet, combined with Passive UniBeam coverage, allows for surface mounting via the included wall-mount bracket, resulting in the least possible aesthetic intrusion.

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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, too. Additionally, 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 is thrilled with the results of the new system. “It has given the ground even coverage and dispersion, and the fact that the loudspeakers are IP66-rated and utilize 100V taping made the installation even more seamless. The quality of the sound is amazing. I soon realized that a cricket pitch is a lot bigger than I once thought, so I ended up walking around it in circles to double check that everything was performing correctly. I was really 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.”