Offering customers a huge choice of entertainment, Stones venues incorporate chilled lounge areas, up-beat dancefloors, live music stages and a relaxed bar and pool table environment, all open seven days per week. After hearing the EAW system recently installed by Surgesound in the Manhattan Club in Johannesburg, Adam Collingwood, operations manager for the Stones Group, had no hesitation in commissioning Surgesound to supply and install a customised Lab.gruppen-powered EAW system throughout Stones Tygervalley (Cape Town) and Stones Centurion (Pretoria), accompanied by an intelligent lighting system.
Indeed, Stones Centurion now boasts the biggest and most powerful audio and lighting setup throughout all of the Stones venues to date, totalling a whopping 23,000W of amplifier power alone. The loudspeaker components include four EAW MK5366 high output, bi-amped professional installation speakers combined with four EAW Avalon DCS2 dual 12" subwoofers for the dancefloor/live area. Surround sound for the VIP areas is handled by ten EAW Commercial SM55 ultra-compact, lightweight, high efficiency loudspeakers while the surround system for the pool table section comprises four EAW CP499 high performance ceiling-mount speakers.
Finally, a total of eight EAW commercial CIS400 ceiling speakers featuring a 6.5" driver and delivering monitor-like sound quality were selected for the surrounding areas of the club. The entire system is driven by Lab.gruppen C-Series power amplifiers with processing via an EAW Commercial DX810 full-featured digital matrix mixer that delivers true 8 x 10 mixing, 3-band swept EQ, gates and compressors on each input plus 1/3-octave graphic and 8-band parametric EQ, delays and crossovers on each input.
The results are stunning, according to South African indie rock band, the Parlotones, who regularly play at Stones countrywide and are now starting to enjoy international recognition (they start their UK tour next month). Kahn Morbee, Parlotones lead singer, says: "We've always enjoyed playing at Stones Centurion but it's great to see that the company is making greater investments into the quality of the audio and lighting equipment. The new system looks and sounds fabulous and I believe that Stones have set a higher benchmark for other venues to follow."
(Lee Baldock)
