American international luxury men's lifestyle brand John Varvatos has around 30 stores around the world, from San Francisco to Mexico City to London to Moscow to Bangkok and beyond. When the company added its fifth New York City location in the Westfield World Trade Center mall, it called on Essential Communications to design and install a music playback system to reflect its rock-and-roll sensibilities.

At the core of the Essential Communications solution are Community loudspeakers supported by Ashly Audio four-channel nXp8004 DSP-equipped network multi-mode amplifiers, Ashly’s WR1.5 remote volume control and source/preset selector, and Ashly’s iPad/iPhone remote control app.

‘We specialise in retail, restaurant, and hotels where the client cares a lot about the aesthetics,’ says Essential Communications founder and President, David Schwartz. ‘Although we don’t design based on price, we have to be sensitive to it. Like us, our clients want an amazing sounding system that doesn’t cost a lot.

‘Ashly is one of those rare companies that delivers great sounding products that are rock-solid reliable for way less than comparable products. And they have a huge array of amplifier sizes – from two, four or eight channels, offering 75W to 3kW per channel, with or without network connectivity or DSP, so I can fit any project.’

At John Varvatos WTC, Schwartz opted for a four-channel Ashly nXp8004 Protea-enabled DSP network amplifier, which delivers 800W/channel. Essential Communications gave the new store loudspeakers to complement its displays of rock-and-roll memorabilia – the store had several old 1970s-era home hi-fi loudspeakers that – although non-functional and degraded from a sound perspective – still had all their visual charm. Schwartz and his team simply gutted the large cabinets and put new Community v2-8 loudspeakers inside.

To control the system, Essential Communications gave the staff a physical Ashly WR-1.5 combined volume control and input source selection remote, along with the Ashly Remote App, a custom wireless remote for the iPad or iPhone. ‘Everyone’s into the remote control apps these days, and Ashly makes a great one,’ Schwartz says. ‘Half the time they ask “can I control it from my phone?”, and half the time I suggest it before they think to ask. Either way, they love being able to control their new system from their device.’