The latest and largest nightclub in the Pacha franchise, Pacha Ibiza Dubai has opened after four years in design and construction.

Located next to the Madinat Jumeirah resort, the new club is spread over three floors, providing a mix of entertainment, room spaces, VIP locations, and a rooftop terrace. It demanded a complex, zoned sound system requiring in excess of 100 channels of amplification. This was achieved using loudspeakers from d&b audiotechnik’s V Series, Q Series and White Series, served by a Symetrix Symnet/Dante network

The Pacha club chain was established in 1967 in Sitges, and first found fame in Ibiza. Since then, it has established itself in Brazil, the United States, Germany, Egypt, Portugal and Austria. Its most recent opening can be found in Dubai.

Of the Dubai venue’s three rooms, the Main Room is located on the ground floor and offers a restaurant and live shows. The Red Room on the mezzanine level provides funk and alternative music, while the Pacha Ibiza Rooftop is an outdoor lounge playing soulf, lounge and deep house.

Central to the operation of the audio system are three Symetrix SymNet Radius AEC Dante-enabled DSPs and SymNet xOut 12s output expanders. ‘These are very powerful processors but in this project, their main role is input selection and zone control,’ says Amrith Verghese from the project’s systems integrator Lightbox.

The Main Room, Red Room and rooftop each have their own SymNet Radius AEC, fitted with selected I/O option cards. These are located in the rooftop and ground floor rack rooms, and all connected via a Dante digital audio network. This was the first time that Verghese had used this arrangement: ‘Right now, the SymNet Radius AECs are all linked and on the same Wi-Fi network so I just have to control them through a browser. All the zone controls are accessible through the processors.’

‘We use Symetrix in 99 per cent of our key installation projects,’ says Chadi el Masri, Managing Partner at Lightbox. ‘In a venue such as Pacha, zoning and connecting several venues under one platform are vital factors, and in a challenging situation such as Pacha presented, Symetrix delivers.

‘The user interface and sound quality are, of course, essential ingredients too. High fidelity audio is paramount and unlike with other products we have used in the past, we have experienced no sound degradation with Symetrix.’

The Pacha installation also makes full use of SymNet Radius AEC’s support for Audinate’s Dante media networking technology. ‘The Dante-enabled devices allow us to achieve the scalability and flexibility needed to meet the specifications of the simplest to the most complex installations,’ notes el Masri. ‘Symetrix is now, with good reason, the established benchmark for this kind of installation project.

‘When you work in a place where you know the content will all be Electronic Dance Music, with no acoustic content, everything pure electronic, then you don’t want any contribution from the room acoustic,’ says Janko Ramuscak of d&b, who lead the German design team and devised the main sound system, withsupport from Juanma De Casas of d&b Spain. ‘The ideal room would be totally dry and direct.

‘Amrith and I commissioned this system in November. The Lightbox team he assembled did a fantastic job working with install partner Cornerstone Technologies to achieve a perfect outcome.’

‘We have created a unique show especially for the Dubai market,’ says Pacha Global Franchise director, Marta Planells. ‘We are not just bringing a nightclub to Dubai – we are bringing the spirit of the island. What Pacha has is history and soul – and great sound.’

‘When I switched on the system for the people from the club to walk around and listen, they were all smiles,’ Verghese adds.