The venue, costing an estimated £5.5m, is spread over two floors occupying approximately 27,000sq.ft and features hand carved exotic wood walls, elaborate furniture and dominating statues - both over the main entrance and within the premises itself.
Shaka Zulu is a high profile, large scale project, some three years in the making; proprietor Roger Payne turned to long term supplier Carl Broadhurst and his company CTS Productions to provide the audible heart of the venue.
"For such a high profile venue, Martin Audio is always one of my personal first choices. Our past experience with this leading brand has been highly successful with more than a positive response from clients," commented Broadhurst..
The Martin Audio sound system is certainly comprehensive. The dancefloor, situated on the lower level of the two floors, features the W8VDQ differential dispersion cabinets - flown as a left / right arrangement. They are complemented by a pair of flown Martin Audio Blackline F8+ cabinets, in a horizontal orientation, providing rear-fill, and a pair of wall-mounted F12+ cabinets proving additional coverage to the left hand edge of the large area.
Low frequencies are augmented by a pair of WS218X 2x18" cabinets, which on the opening night caused enough vibration in the office space that they manoeuvred several expensive bottles of wine from the desk to the floor.
CTS Productions have maintained continuity with the brand upstairs where a pair of Martin Audio F15+ cabinets, flown in a horizontal orientation, provide an enhanced volume to one space, designated as a potential additional dancefloor. Some 36 units of the compact, wide dispersion AQ5 provide even coverage for most of the restaurant-only seated areas in the venue, while additional bass response is provided by four AQ112s.
Martin Audio's Engineer 818 8-in/8-out DSP-based system controller, provides the front end to this large scale system, performing input matrix, zoning and initial processing before supplying feeds to an Engineer 418 and a pair of DX1.5s, that provide the individual loudspeaker processing and time alignment.
User control is provided via two of the Engineer Remotes that allow selection of the 'Restaurant' 'DJ' and 'Live preset zones and also control the individual zonal volume levels.
The system has a variety of inputs available, the first being the well specified DJ booth, featuring Pioneer CDJ2000s, a Rane Serato interface and a DJM 800 mixer with a pair of Martin Audio F8+ providing monitoring.
Supplier LMC Audio's London branch trade counter team were integral in finalising the design of this system, with Jeff Woodford providing input to several aspects of the job including the choice and configuration of the system processing.
(Jim Evans)
