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Arsenal Football Club has revamped their flagship store, The Armoury, to bring the excitement and energy of match day to the fan shopping experience. Taking the opportunity to introduce elements like audio effects and video through a multi-zone design, Arsenal FC has created a truly unique experience.
This ambitious project was born from the desire to deliver an immersive, realistic experience to various zones of The Armoury. The goals for this project included an entrance that behaves as a virtual player tunnel, themed changing rooms complete with atmospheric audio, detailed audio to support video displays, and an engaging Virtual Reality area called “The Cage” where customers can try out their skills on a virtual pitch. With very unique and specific technology needs, the team at The Armoury leveraged the vision and expertise of design firm 442 and installer Knektd Ltd.
“We were absolutely delighted to be asked to pitch for this prestigious project by 442, after recommendation by the Armoury’s music streaming provider and audio effects creator, Open Ear. 442’s specific brief was for immersive sound to create a sense of a shared experience with the Arsenal Club and team. Essentially, the new Armoury would be an audio experience as much as a visual one, the two coming together to inspire customers with the excitement of a match day.”
Stewart Maynard – Knektd Ltd
To achieve the sophisticated goals of this interactive store, the audio hardware had to be powerful, detailed, and designed to blend in with the space without being distracting. For this, the team at Knektd selected Sonance Professional Series and Sonance Invisible Series speakers. Sonance Professional Series speakers are minimalistic in design for a clean finish to this space. They are also 70V/100V to deliver the coverage and power required for this project. And for areas where the speaker’s visual presence would subtract from the overall experience, the Sonance Invisible Series commercial speaker was deployed. All the Sonance speakers selected for this project were also compatible with EASE software for specifying and measuring speaker placement and output.
Sonance Invisible Series speakers were installed in the ceiling of the entrance “tunnel” to provide a realistic game day ambience. The speakers have a wide dispersion of over 170 degrees making their placement difficult to pinpoint and the experience more immersive. They are completely hidden behind the plaster of the ceiling, adding to the immersive feeling of walking through the player tunnel. Also added to the tunnel were Sonance Professional Series 6” in-ceiling speakers. These were strategically placed along the lower half of the tunnel along with PIR sensors to reproduce football cleats on a hard surface as people enter through the space.
Sonance Professional Series in-ceiling speakers were also selected for the changing rooms to transform them into curated experiences, one with sounds of the Arsenal Tube Station, one that feels like you’re in the Club’s Locker Room and one that has the feeling of the Emirates Stadium itself. For the video walls, Sonance Professional Series pendant speakers were installed just above the viewing area to draw customers in and engage them in the video content. The speakers were calibrated to achieve the proper volume and output to be inviting but not distracting.
As a whole, The Armoury has been transformed into a totally unique, immersive, and engaging shopping experience for football fans. The audio and its interaction with the surrounding environment have provided a more complete immersion of the senses that leaves customers with an unforgettable feeling of being part of the game and the Arsenal FC.
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