The growth of Vietnam’s business and industrial sectors has been paced by that of its entertainment sector, with new venues regularly opening their doors Among them is the Chill Skybar overlooking Ho Chi Minh City.
Opened in 2011, the bar has established itself as one of the most popular but persistent noise spill meant that its audio was fundamentally inadequate – enter local A/V firm DesignLive Technologies to undertake an upgrade. ‘The venue was highly regarded, but there was problems with the sound quality and noise bleed resulted in complaints from neighbours,’ explains DesignLive Technologies owner, Phu Tran Pham.
‘Working with Dave Coxon from DJW Projects in Australia, we set about reworking the entire system, basing our design around smaller speakers on vibration mounts and having them fire inwards instead of out. Everything sits on a Dante network, and the key to making all this work is a pair of Symetrix SymNet Radius 12x8 open architecture Dante-scalable DSPs.’
Familiarity with the SymNet Radius 12x8 processors and their ‘amazing reliability’ were among the factors that prompted their specification for the Chill Skybar project. Once selected, Phu reports that they also ‘really helped us to optimise the coverage and get the best possible sound quality from the outside space, which has quite an unusual shape. The end-result, I believe, is one of the best-sounding systems in the whole of Vietnam.’
Joining the DSP units and four SymNet xOut 12 output expanders in the installation are amplifiers from Powersoft and loudspeakers drawn from EAW and Australian Monitor. Background music and live DJ sets are relayed throughout the venue, which can be zoned in separate indoor/outdoor configurations or as a single space.
‘We love the functionality and reliability of Dante networking, and we are finding that the combination of Dante and Symetrix SymNet processors is a really strong one for us,’ concludes Phu. ‘That certainly applies in the case of the Chill Skybar project, where the owners have offered exceptionally good feedback about the new set-up since the upgrade was completed.’
