UK - Edinburgh’s W Hotel is the latest addition to the Marriott International estate. Atop the building’s steel-spiral-clad exterior is a 12th floor rooftop terrace that boasts sweeping vistas of the city’s skyline and is the setting for a multi-speaker sound system from K-array, installed by London-based Link Media Systems.
“Sound is a big thing with the W brand,” affirmed W Edinburgh’s IT manager Kevin Edwards. “It's one of our key components of the brand makeup, and therefore getting the sound right is incredibly important.”
The Link Media technical team came up with a speaker system design that floods the whole terrace area with high level sound while remaining discreet and is also well protected from the elements, thanks to their stainless steel construction.
“We realised straight away that we couldn’t just install a conventional sound system and hope for the best,” explained Link Media Systems project manager Eligio Castro. “Not only is the terrace a big open space that requires fairly high SPL, but the speakers had to be unobtrusive and aimed carefully to contain sound energy within the space.”
That brief presented some acoustic challenges as the setting is open to the elements and the inner-city property is surrounded by neighbours. Link Media’s innovative solution was to install 43 evenly spaced Vyper-KV52 0.5m long line arrays facing inwards from the perimeter of the terrace, each one inlaid amongst the custom designed Rimex copper coloured cladding that helps underpin the W’s architectural style, and at a uniform height.
Serious low end is provided by 16 Rumble-KU210 dual 10” subwoofers which are positioned around the central core of the building, partially hidden above head height underneath the striking steel spiral ribbon that stands out in the landscape and defines the hotel’s modernistic architectural signature.
“We had around 200 guests up here enjoying sundowners at a premier opening party with a live act, and the sound was incredible,” said Edwards. “The coverage is really well focused, delivers plenty of energy and creates a real party mood. We've got to be conscious of the neighbours, but up here on the 12th floor the sound is well contained and doesn’t spill – we’ve had the volume pretty high without any issues, and the K-array speakers are more than capable. The sound quality is excellent, it’s crystal clear”.
The terrace sound system is powered over Dante by Kommander-KA104 amplifiers with onboard DSP from a central equipment room which also houses the BSS Soundweb signal processor. Crestron provides the user interface to give staff access to the relevant system controls and audio inputs.
Downstairs on the ground floor, linking the main reception area with a further themed seating space, is the Cinematic Tunnel – a 10m-long space with banquette seating opposite a 32 x 9 double aspect high resolution video display. At either end of the giant screen are vertically-orientated Vyper-KV52 line arrays which blend in with the display, and a pair of Rumble-KU44 subwoofers are installed under the seating for low frequency reinforcement. Additional Vyper-KV52 line arrays are concealed in alcoves above the seating to reinforce the background audio.
