School Audio System – St. Thomas

School audio system

The St. Thomas School in London is a mixed secondary education setting with approximately 600 pupils. The school sits on an urban site comprising two central older buildings with additional buildings added at later dates, some interconnecting.

The school required an audio system to help improve wider communications between staff and with the students. In addition, the school required playout of a series of automated audio messages for regular announcements such as fire alarm testing, exam and event details.

We worked with the school IT and other various department managers to define a lockdown strategy. A dedicated IP audio solution was installed to allow lockdown and other priority audio message files to be triggered on demand via a secure web browser. A protected local ‘lockdown’ button was also installed which was connected to the IP audio player for direct triggering of the lockdown audio message.

Our audio design

Working with the site IT and site maintenance teams, we conducted a number of surveys to help us identify and tackle the limited existing cable containment and routing for speaker cabling installation. It was decided to base the school audio system design principally on traditional 100v audio but to use the school IP network to distribute audio to two strategic IT/comms room locations – thus minimising long length site cabling. IP audio encoders and IP audio decoders were used to support this strategy and distribution topology.

IP Audio Message players were installed to provide user access to audio message playout. This included any regularly required audio messages by using a time based scheduler as well as on-demand playout triggering via secure browser and via also from a protected wall button installed at the school reception area.

Background music (BGM) was required within specified locations and more widely for special occasions. We installed an IP audio encoder with a wall input plate to enable the user to connect any music source with a ‘line out’ (eg. Tablet, CD player or smart phone). Music from this source was presented to the audio matrix for routing selection by the user as required.