A large, quickly-growing hospitality operator with a number of high-profile pubs, bars and restaurants – mainly in the Sydney area of Australia – Merivale is run by Justin Hemmes, who takes a very personal and hands-on interest in the audio aspects of its work.
So, when The Newport shore-line pub was added to the Merivale portfolio recently, he and Merivale A/V Manager, Glenn Rayner, wlooked to Martin Audio’s new CDD (Coaxial Differential Dispersion) series and MLA (Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array).
Formerly the Newport Arms, the venue is a large pub with an al fresco garden area that looks out over the water. Setting out the sound design, Rayner explains: ‘We looked at the existing audio at The Newport and quickly established that the only way we’d get the sort of clarity and coverage we required was to have lots of speakers.’ And this meant negating any dead spots or alternatively ‘hot spots’.
In the final analysis, they specified 180 CDD loudspeakers: ‘It’s an enormous installation – the design process took months,’ he says.
Rayner was already aware that the the CDD coaxial loudspeaker design would be well suited to hospitality installs such as this: ‘Because it’s coaxial you can install the speaker in a landscape or portrait orientation and you maintain the same highly coherent sound quality. What’s more, the dispersion pattern of the Martin Audio CDD design is intentionally non-symmetrical. It means there’s a wider dispersion pattern for those close to the speaker (around 120°) and narrower for those more distant (~80°). The advantage of such an approach is a more consistent delivery of HF, regardless of the listening distance.’
He could equally see a role for MLA in the Newport garden, which features a full performance stage. The audio here comprises eight Martin Audio MLA Mini elements a side, each with a pair of MLA Mini subs. Every MLA enclosure is bi-amped and individually addressed (40 channels of amplification are devoted to the stage alone), and the array is beam steered down to constrain the throw to around 25m. ‘We wanted to do something that no only sounded good but looked the part,’ Rayner says. ‘The Martin Audio array certainly looks like it’s meant to be there and looks a lot like a festival stage – which is what we were going for.’
Live music is a regular weekend fixture at The Newport, and a rack has been prepared that’s easily wheeled to side of stage and with a Cat5 connection plugged into the system. A ‘one-connection’ setup preconfigures the rest of the venue’s loudspeaker zones to accommodate the live performance. The remaining 180-odd loudspeakers throughout the rest of the venue are time-delayed, using the stage PA as ‘time zero’.
The system overall is driven by 38 four-channel amplifiers – a total of 144 channels (with no more than three speakers assigned to each channel – giving superior zone control. ‘Across every output and group of speakers we have EQ, compression, delay, HPF, LPF, DSP on every output; we’re not limited in any way,’ he continues. ‘It means we can walk the venue with a Wi-Fi device and fine tune settings for every set of speakers. It took weeks to get right.’
Much of the success of this design and installation was due to the involvement of experienced audio consultant (and Technical Director of Technical Audio Group, the Martin Audio distributors), Anthony Russo. He played a pivotal role in the design, while the meticulous installation itself was undertaken by Corporate Technology Services.
Looking to the future, Rayner foresees Merivale making greater use of IPTV across its venues. ‘I’m looking forward to having streamed media available all the time, anywhere. It’s something we have in a more modest way but I can see it being widespread when it’s more cost effective and simpler to use – that’ll be a great day.’
