American comfort food and good music are the agenda for New York City’s Esther & Carol’s E&C Studio – along with a recently reinvigorated sound system.

Located in Lower Manhattan, the venue is divided into three sections – the Art Deco-inspired American bistro (Esther & Carol), a takeout burger window (E&C Burger), and a music-focused basement lounge (E&C Studio). Music fans head down to the basement lounge, which is modelled on a 1970s-era recording studio. The walls sport images of music legends, and Gibson guitars that musicians can take down and play.

However, E&C Studio is, after all, in a basement. It’s a tight space, with low ceilings, and system designer Peter Turloch of Art of Entertainment quickly realised that the new sound system would need to have a minimal footprint and be carefully managed.

‘It’s a pretty typical New York City basement, and the ceiling is quite low, so the space required several sets of loudspeakers,’ Turloch recalls.

The system uses Renkus-Heinz main speakers and subwoofers, and a pair of stage monitors. Another pair of speakers is positioned 18 feet back from the stage, one facing the bar and the other facing the side seating. Subwoofers sit underneath those loudspeakers, built into the raised floor that supports the side seating. Yet another pair of speakers serves the rear seating area. We chose a Symetrix Radius 12x8 EX DSP for speaker management for the whole system. All loudspeakers are from Renkus-Heinz.

‘Live music is a very important component for E&C,’ says Rich Trombitas of A/V experts Cardone, Solomon & Associates, who guided Turloch toward the Symetrix DSP solution. ‘John Legend is one of the investors, so they bring in top-level musicians. The quality standards are high, so they needed a DSP with very wide dynamic range that provides uncoloured processing of live music. Symetrix DSPs are a great choice for that.’

The Radius 12x8 EX, as its name implies, offers 12 analogue inputs and eight analogue outputs, plus Dante I/O. ‘Since we had so many loudspeakers and subwoofers, we added a Symetrix 4 Channel Analog Output expansion card, giving us a total of 12 analogue outputs,’ Trombitas says. ‘On the front end, the Midas M32R main console, including the monitor outputs, goes straight to the Symetrix Radius. There’s a Pioneer DJ mixer, as well, and both the line outs and monitor outs of that go to the Radius. So when artists use the mixers, the stage monitors are processed by the Radius 12x8 EX DSP, along with the house speakers, delay speakers, and subs.’

Using Symetrix Composer programming software, Turloch set speaker delays so that the imaging was correctly orientated to the stage. Careful timing ensured that all speakers maintain the stage as the point of origin.

Another consideration was that E&C Studio hosts a variety of DJs and engineers. ‘Given all the guest DJs and engineers who don’t work regularly with the E&C system, they needed comprehensive speaker dynamics control,’ Turloch explains. ‘With the Symetrix Radius, we could set up the system to allow optimal levels while minimising danger to the speakers-and the patrons’ ears-if someone turns it up too high.’

The ownership group evidently approves of the new system: ‘They liked that I steered them into a great solution for addressing the low-ceiling environment, the tight space, and the minimal footprint that was required,’ Turloch reports. ‘With the Symetrix Radius 12x8 EX, we could precisely manage timing and levels while maintaining a clear, clean signal to the speakers, and control is easy. In a challenging acoustic environment, E&C has amazingly good sound that fully meets their expectations.’

More: www.symetrix.co