Frederick Bremer School in Walthamstow is a community school for 900 pupils aged 11-16. It is named after a local entrepreneur who invented the first petrol driven car in 1894. He drove it around the local streets of Walthamstow, but the design was never put into mass production. The car was donated to the Walthamstow Museum where it is still on display.
The school reached out to Clarity for a full assessment of their existing across-site public address and paging system. It was clear straight away that the system was inappropriate for the required purpose, so its complete removal was advised.
To save on cost, as much of the original network cabling as possible was reused. The loudspeakers however were not fit for purpose so had to be replaced with speakers appropriate for each location. These included cabinet speakers, bi-directional speakers, low impedance speakers and network music horns installed inside and out across the school to ensure all areas have an even cover of sound at an appropriate sound pressure level.
The new system incorporates lesson change notification, background music, announcements and has emergency announcement override. Loudspeakers from Penton supported by a Terracom™ audio over IP infrastructure was chosen for their track-history of quality and reliability on large infrastructure projects worldwide. The system is designed to ensure it is simple and easy for anyone to use with minimal instruction and with the ability to be expanded with additional zones or features when required.
The upgrade gave Frederick Bremer School the opportunity to reset the loudspeaker zones to make them more appropriate for the school day and now includes a GPS linked clock and a scheduler to control lesson change announcements. These are made up of a selection of pre-recorded music snippets and announcements. These functions are fully customisable giving Frederick Bremer the opportunity to be creative and imaginative with the audio environment.
What is Zoning?
A ‘zoned sound system’ splits geographical areas of the site into separately defined spaces, all controlled via the same equipment. This allows announcement, music, or alerts to be sent to one, multiple or all zones as required. It is also possible to set sound levels in each zone independently. This is especially important if a zone needs to be kept relatively quiet or if one of the spaces has a high ambient sound level to be overcome.
