The largest private restaurant group in Finland, Royal Ravintolat operates more than 70 restaurants throughout the country and counts Sandro among its many brands. Drawing on the flavours of Middle East, North Africa and Mediterranean cuisine, the latest Sandro restaurant has a prime location in Tampere’s newest shopping mall, Ratina. In keeping with its warm and vibrant colour scheme, theme, Royal Ravintolat selected Genelec 4000 Series installation loudspeakers in a custom colour to complement the interior design.

Royal Ravintolat turned to specialist electrical and A/V contractor HT-Teknocenter to install the new system. As one of the company’s preferred suppliers, HT-Teknocenter is experienced in restaurant installations and already familiar with Genelec: ‘The only real challenge was time and the extremely tight project schedule,’ explains HT-Teknocenter’s Hannu Mankki. ‘Other than that, it was easy.

‘Genelec was a totally natural choice for the restaurant: first, they management were already familiar with the brand having used it elsewhere within the group and been very satisfied; and second, Genelec offered them everything they wanted – excellent audio quality, superb customer service and the ability to order the speakers in the special RAL colour to perfectly match their décor.’

It helped that HT-Teknocenter was also familiar with Genelec, having used Genelec loudspeakers in several previous installations: ‘We are always pleased to work with Genelec,’ Mankki confirms. ‘The products look good, sound good and, being active, are really easy to install. We don’t have to worry about finding somewhere to put an amp rack, or running cabling for amplifiers, it’s just plug-and-play. I’ve never come across a customer yet who is unhappy with the sound quality, and if we need a hand with optimising the sound, Genelec is just a phone call away and always happy to help.

‘The other issue that is important to us as integrators is reliability – we are practically never called back to a Genelec installation. Once it’s in and tuned, it will run for years and years. As far as we are concerned, Genelec was exactly the right choice for Sandro, especially with the RAL colour option.’

HT-Teknocenter installed ten active, two-way 4030C installation loudspeakers in RAL 6034 Pastel Turquoise supplemented by two active AIC25 in-ceiling speakers.

‘We went for the 4030C on this occasion because Sandro is a pretty big space with very high ceilings, so we needed the power of the 4030C rather than the smaller 4020C often used in restaurants, just to ensure that we could adequately fill the space with sound,’ Mankki says. ‘The aim is to add ambience at low levels, but we still need to be able to hear the detail. However, as the speakers are all installed a long way above head height, the larger 4030C was the better choice to achieve our sound goals.’

‘We already know that Genelec will give us exactly what we need in terms of audio quality, so we have no worries on that score,’ says Royal Ravintolat Project Manager, Kenneth Granroth. ‘What was important for us in the context of Sandro was making sure that the installation was compatible with our design objectives – essentially, the fact that we could order the speakers in pale turquoise to complement the deep turquoise walls and upholstery pretty much sealed the deal. It looks great and sounds fantastic.

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