Palomino Lounge Enmore

d&b Install at Country-Style Bar

Andy McQueen and Brendan Mew-Sum met running warehouse dance parties around Sydney. They tired of hiring production from others and started buying their own speakers. About 12 years ago, Buzz Speaker Hire was formed to service the broader world. They have continually expanded and now offer a broad range of AV hire and installation services from their latest factory.

Buzz recently kitted out Palomino Lounge in Enmore, Sydney, with d&b audiotechnik’s U5 and U3 loudspeakers – believed to be the first U Series installation in Australia. CX caught up with Andy to talk about Palomino and its audio enhancements.

What’s Your Pony?

Andy describes the venue as “a small bar. I think capacity is probably 60 or 80 people.” The fit-out was inspired by a Nashville or New Orleans music bar aesthetic, and performers are generally in the Southern US roots style. He finds it has “a bit of a country cowboy kind of vibe.” It also has an extensive list of cocktails.

Buzz had earlier “hired a few bits and pieces to the venue, then sold them some old second-hand boxes to get them through their start-up. A grant opportunity came up, and the owners approached us to upgrade the system to something of a higher calibre.”

Andy “went and had a look at the space and thought about what would work there.” He considered a few different options and then demoed some potential boxes. Compared with several other units, d&b’s U Series comprehensively won over all the ears in the Buzz warehouse. Andy particularly liked that the U5 “was probably five and a half dB louder (than anything else) and sounded better at limit.” Overall, they found “it sounded better always, but in particular handled going into limit nicely.” What house system would not benefit from that?

U5 Up Front and Rear Fill U3

Two U5 speakers were paired for FoH, and enhanced with an 18-inch 18S-SUB. Andy considered the Lounge as too small to justify delays but added a smaller U3 speaker at the rear of the room. This fills out the space, particularly when there is no performer on stage. He cleverly “put the rear fill on its own fader on their QU5 mixing desk, so that if the sound engineer chooses to not use the fill for a performance, they can do that. They can just pull that fader down.”

What they can’t pull down are the physical enclosures. All the U5 and U3 speakers are mounted via “threaded rod with a spring to reduce vibrations up through the structure.” Buzz used d&b fly brackets to connect to the rod. All the speakers used are passive, powered by one d&b D25 touring amplifier.

The U Series from d&b is best described as a multipurpose point-source loudspeaker. The design uses a bipole LF driver arrangement to enhance vertical directivity control down to 500 Hz. Each cabinet has a rotatable high-frequency waveguide-horn assembly for HF dispersion. d&b claims increased headroom and reduced distortion from this arrangement. Perhaps this is part of why Andy and his crew enjoy these boxes when pushed hard.

Apart from the obvious parameters of price and technical specifications, the Buzz team went old-school on this job and used their ears. To them, the clarity and detail that the U Series offers are exactly what this venue needed. And when someone gets excited by an extra cocktail and nudges the volume towards the upper limit, the system will still sound good.

The Good Kind of Feedback

A few weeks after installation, Andy reported that the staff are “loving it. They have remarked a few times to the boss about how now it feels like you can still talk, but the music’s nice and loud. It feels a lot fuller.” Some of this is no doubt due to the addition of a sub with the new rig and recent acoustic treatment of the room, yet reports from the floor of everything sounding “even better and even clearer by a long margin” back the gear selection that Buzz has made.

Making the process easier, they had exemplary support from the team at NAS Solutions, having recently completed a different installation with their assistance using ArrayCalc and site tuning.

That tuning is what Andy is most focused on. Early on in his audio journey, he’d been reading everything he could online, “reading every subwoofer array document, handbook and that kind of thing.” He was also listening and learning as he went.

On their first nightclub install, they brought in “close to 10 different audio technicians, acousticians and people who claimed that they would be able to tune the system there to sound good” before he was happy with the sound. The process prompted him to learn much more about tuning and EQ, then do the job himself.

The end result is a long list of happy customers like Palomino Lounge. Buzz Speaker Hire hasn’t stopped yet, with some very interesting projects on the books. That’s worth a cheeky cocktail or two.

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GEAR LIST:

2 x d&b audiotechnik U5 Loudspeaker

• Point-source, compact 2-way passive loudspeaker
• Components: 2 x 6.5″ / 1″
• Dispersion: 90° x 60° rotatable
• SPLmax: 133 dB
• Weight: 11.5 kg

1 x d&b audiotechnik U3 Loudspeaker

• Point-source, compact 2-way passive loudspeaker
• Components: 2 x 5″ / 0.75″
• Dispersion: 100° x 65° rotatable
• SPLmax: 128 dB
• Weight: 7.1 kg

1 x d&b audiotechnik 18S-SUB Subwoofer

• Installation-specific compact subwoofer Components: 18″
• Dispersion: omnidirectional SPLmax: 132 dB
• Weight: 32 kg

1 x d&b audiotechnik D25 amplifier

• Mobile-specific four-channel amplifier
• Maximum output power: 4 x 1800/900 W into 4/8 Ohms
• Maximum output voltage/current: 120 Vpeak / 35 Apeak
• Operating and monitoring display, colour TFT touchscreen, 4.3″ / 480 x 272 pixels
• Milan-enabled

MORE INFO:

palominolounge.com.au

buzzspeakerhiresydney.com.au

dbaudio.com/global/en/the-u-series

nas.solutions