History: why Customer decided to purchase a Public Address system? (Necessity of new installation or update of existing system?)

Some years ago there was a lot of preparation for the 300th anniversary of  Saint-Petersburg’s founding. As a part of city’s global renovation a new railway Terminal “Ladozhsky” also called Ladoga Rail Terminal was built and opened in 2003. Initial plans for construction were formed at the end of the 1980s when five existing railway terminals hardly coped with the increased volume of passenger traffic, but unfortunately the project was shelved. Construction began on the station in 2001 and was completed in 2003. The terminal with an area of 28,000 square meters was built by general contractor Baltic Building Company and its subcontractors in a record time - 23 months, although according to norms, construction of such structures takes more than five years.

Now Ladozhsky Rail Terminal is the newest and most modern passenger railway station in Saint Petersburg. The station, designed by architect Nikita Yavein, is one of the largest in Russia with a capacity of up to 50 commuter departures and 26 long distance departures accommodating 4,500 passengers per hour.

It serves routes to the north and east previously served by Moscow Rail Terminal, as well as some lines previously served by Finlyandsky Rail Terminal. Some trains originating at Moscow and bound to other cities via Saint Petersburg are also using the station. Of the five active major stations in Saint Petersburg, Ladozhsky Rail Terminal is the only one to have rail tracks that pass through the station without terminating in a dead-end, allowing through trains to continue after stopping at the station without reversal of direction.

In the opinion of most experts, according to its architecture and functional designation, the three-tier complex is unmatched in Russia: it is designed in such a way that flows of arriving and departing passengers by commuter and long-distance trains do not cross.

The terminal is virtually completely located above rail tracks and highways. The railway terminal also houses a hotel and first-aid centre.

Around nine billion roubles were spent to build entire terminal infrastructure with approaches, bridges and sidings. Out of the total, two billion roubles were allocated to build the station proper with its automated information and control systems as well as sales and booking offices.

Ladozhsky Rail Terminal has infrastructure based on smart building technologies and, without doubt is one of “smartest” in Europe. Its electronic systems provide comfort conditions, security and high level of customer service. The concept of the intelligent building means a full cooperation of more than thirty systems, including security, engineering systems, power supply, public information equipment, communication systems etc.

The integrated system automatically tracks out train arrivals and forms messages for the information boards in the halls and for the information desks. In the case of fire alarm the system disables the ventilation and conditioning system, positions PTZ cameras to a hot spot zone and activate the fire extinguishing. The integrated system saves up to 30% of operating costs and allow to decrease a total quantity of maintenance service people in half.

In the beginning of project design, the project organization chose the old Philips SM-40 for Public Address System. Those days the first in the world fully digital voice evacuation system Praesideo from Bosch was only in plans to be released but company Gulfstream (Bosch dealer and system integrator from Moscow) announced the unique features and functionality of the new innovative system to customer and promised to delivery the equipment by a specified date of installation.

Presented to developer the system characteristics, such as single optical cable for digital audio and control data distribution, high-performance amplifiers with implemented digital audio equalization and signal delays, cable redundancy  and amplifiers hot sparing, as well as Praesideo topology gave best fit to the building plan and the prospective communication network’s architecture.

As a result, design of Public Address system was based on Praesideo thus Ladozhsky Rail Terminal became one of the first Praesideo installed systems in Russia.

PA system requirements (what Client requested in this project?)

The main function of Public Address system, requested by customer, was full-automatic announcement system, i.e. hardware and software system which could serve functions of a speaking operator. Open interface, modular architecture of Praesideo made it possible.

What factor helped to win project?

The system integrator “Informsviaz” was one of the first companies in Russia which started to use intelligent building technologies and implement the integrated building management system to control the different engineering systems.

The system design for the Ladozhsky Rail Terminal building proposed a minimum quantity of maintenance engineers and control operators – up to 4 or 6 persons and the project offered maximum level of functional automation. This fact was a competitive advantage and .

The “automatic speaker” system, which was developed by the system integrator using Praesideo and special software, impressed customer very much.

A whole hard duty work of the Control operator was simplified and now the main control function consisted in system supervision and monitoring through a computer screen.

Surely, not every function in Public Address system can be fully substituted by an automatic feature: for example, an announcement with live speech “Passenger Ivanov! Your family is waiting for your arrival near the ticket office!” requires a speaker. For this case the automatic speaker software provided a unique feature of recording live messages and their following automatic repeat.

Project technical details. Systems/products/special features and configurations?

An optical system ring was built to cover all communication points of the building. Several branches, including the optical branches to the adjacent buildings (where part of  the maintenance service department located), were laid to reach every distant part of the building.

Praesideo system was integrated with other security systems and controlled by the building management system.

Amongst special configuration settings we can pay attention to time delays of audio signals and equalizers, aimed to reach a high quality sound reproduction in different acoustical environment.

This a 240 meters long and 11 stored building with variety of wide halls, narrow passages, platforms (up to 300 meters) and different size rooms with its specific architecture and acoustics challenged to make a correct choice of  loudspeakers and sound equipment. Public Address system used more than 12 models of loudspeakers, including active systems Intellivox. These digitally controlled active line arrays were installed in the central waiting hall named “Svetovoy” (light hall). This hall 85 meters long, 18 meters across has three dome parts in the ceiling and 6 passages to the adjacent halls. Smooth stone cladding and a big number of glass wall surfaces made this hall difficult for the sound project group. Possibility of high-accuracy digital setting of the opening angle, focus distance, equalization let to reach the clear, natural sound with excellent intelligibility and cover a big distance.

(28 zones, 16 amps, 2 NCO)