Acoustic modelling, LiDAR and voice alarm consultancy

What does acoustic modelling tell you before anything is installed?

See what the room will do to the sound before a single loudspeaker is installed.

We build full 3D acoustic models of your space using measured noise data, reverberation times, and surface properties from the actual building, not assumptions from a datasheet. The model shows how well speech will carry across the space, which the room and its noise decide as much as the loudspeakers do. You compare alternative layouts on predicted performance and cost, and see where more loudspeakers will help and where they will not.

LiDAR scanning
We scan your space with LiDAR to produce a millimetre-accurate 3D model of the building as it actually is, not as the drawings say it should be. Built spaces vary from their original drawings and change over time. Even where drawings exist, the scan is more accurate. Where drawings are incomplete, outdated, or do not exist at all, the scan makes acoustic modelling possible where it otherwise would not be.

Acoustic modelling
We collect real ambient noise levels and reverberation measurements from your space and feed them into the 3D model alongside the acoustic properties of every surface. The output is a colour map of predicted speech intelligibility across the listening plane, built on measured data from your building. It shows what the space allows. We can then test alternative layouts (different loudspeaker types, different positions, different configurations), so you choose the design based on predicted performance versus cost, with the evidence in front of you.

3D walkthroughs
The LiDAR scan produces a fully navigable 3D walkthrough of your building. This is yours to keep, for facilities records, insurance documentation, or your own marketing. It is a complete digital twin of your space, delivered as a by-product of the acoustic design process.

More loudspeakers will not fix the room. Where the room is the limit, the model shows it, and shows where treatment or a different layout would do more than extra hardware. On-site speech intelligibility measurement is available on request. It is reported as a property of the space and its noise, never as a rating of the sound system.

How many loudspeakers does a room need?

For a simple rectangular space with a flat ceiling, the answer is an estimate you can run yourself: the Zone Output Estimator gives a planning figure for loudspeaker count, spacing and amplifier power, with the working shown. Large, tall, reverberant or noisy space? Irregular shape? Specific intelligibility requirement? That is design territory, not estimation. That is where the model earns its cost: it tells you whether the number the estimate gives will work in the room you actually have, and what to change if it will not.

BS 5839-8 or BS 7827: which applies to a stadium?

Both can, and BS 7827 decides where. BS 7827:2019 is the code of practice for emergency sound systems at sports grounds, large public buildings and venues, and it sits above the other two standards rather than competing with them: its risk assessment divides the venue into zones and allocates each either to BS 5839-8, where the broadcast is triggered by fire detection, or to BS EN 50849, where emergency sound operates independently of it (BS 7827:2019, Clause 4.1). A stadium's concourses and its bowl can therefore sit under different standards, with different battery, fault-monitoring and testing recommendations. A specification that applies one standard to the whole venue is worth checking zone by zone, because somewhere it will be the wrong one.

Where the ground holds a safety certificate, the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (the Green Guide) adds its own recommendations, made binding through the certificate's conditions, and the Safety Advisory Group will expect the evidence in that form. A specification or an assessment from ProAudium states, zone by zone, which standard applies and why. Plain-English notes: BS 7827 and BS 5839-8.

Specification, tender management and expert witness

Acoustic modelling of spaces. Speech intelligibility measurement on request. System specification development. Tender management and contractor selection. Expert witness and compliance advisory. When you need an independent opinion on a complex PAVA, safety sound or ESS installation, at design stage, during procurement or after an incident, it comes with no installation contract riding on it.

• Specification. Written against the standard that applies to each zone, from the model and the measured noise, so bidders price the same system and the lowest bid cannot win by quietly dropping the thing the room needs.
• Tender management. Bids compared against the specification line by line, with the deviations listed, so the decision is made on what each bidder will deliver rather than on the cover letter. ProAudium does not bid in the tenders it manages.
• Expert witness and compliance advisory. After an incident, in a dispute between a building owner and an installer, or when a certifying authority asks whether a system meets the standard it was sold against: findings reported against clause numbers, with the measurements that support them, limited to what was measured and seen.

When the room is the limit

Some spaces will not deliver clear speech with any loudspeaker layout: a tall glazed atrium, a reverberant concourse, a hall whose background noise rises with the crowd. In those cases the useful finding is that the room needs treatment, the message needs to be shorter, or the procedure needs a second channel, and that buying more hardware will spend the budget without changing the result. That finding would cost a consultant who also installs; it costs ProAudium nothing, so you can weigh the advice without wondering what's riding on it.

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Reviewed on 1 October 2026 by Nigel Williams.