AROUND 100 MARTIN AUDIO SPEAKERS POPULATE LATEST MULTIZONE FAIRGAME CITY
Billed as a “giant adult playground” complete with fairground games, three years after the inaugural Fairgame concept was unveiled at Canary Wharf, the operators have followed up with Fairgame City. This is set in the burgeoning One New Change leisure and dining hub, and offers spectacular views of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Middlesex Sound & Lighting (MSL) were responsible for designing and supplying a full AV technical infrastructure at both venues, where sound reinforcement is uniquely through a combination of around 100 Martin Audio loudspeakers (most notably CDD6). In fact, of all Martin Audio’s global partners, MSL have arguably been the largest specifier of the CDD series.
With the evolution of the Fairgame concept, MSL recognised that they needed to incorporate a larger scalable sound system that could be used as and when needed. To give an idea of scale, this basement venue is set on a colossal 24,500 sq. ft. footprint, with the space including 12 exclusive games, street food, bars, and private event areas. Around 100 Martin Audio speakers — predominantly a combination of CDD6 and SX110 subwoofers — have been distributed across eight distinct audio zones.
Where elevated audio is required, BlacklineX has been provided for the Main Bar area — where the DJ resides (complete with a pair of XP12 monitors) — along with the Private Function Area. These are paired with the punchier SX210 / SX212 subwoofers, while toilets and ancillary areas are served by Martin Audio’s ADORN series.
The entire signal distribution is on a Dante backbone, with localised BSS wall panels and Netgear line switching. The entire network, including the effects and house lighting, is under roving master iPad control.
We couldn’t be happier with the end result."
MSL’s project team was led by Toby Jones, who also designed and commissioned the system, working with Fairgame co-founder Richard Hilton, and COO, Toby Cowan. Also assisting with commissioning was Steve Billington, who was also responsible for iPad control integration.
In this riot of activity one of the challenges facing Jones was that of containment — preventing the sound bleeding up to the shops, arcades and restaurants above. It is for this reason he chose such a large complement of speakers, knowing that a large distributed system could be under-driven — further optimised by being placed at strategic heights on Powerdrive acoustic mounts or pole-mounted from the ceiling.
“It was really important to have lots of compact little boxes everywhere at the right height, with the correct orientation,” he rationalised. “The ceilings were quite high, so these custom built, acoustic mount solutions kept the speakers at the correct height. The CDD6s provide a lovely distribution in combination with the compact SX110 subwoofers, mounted on the ceiling.” This ensures the source feeds of BGM, live mic and DJ inputs are heard transparently and with high intelligibility.
A quick fly through the eight zones shows CDD6 at the ground floor entrance and reception as customers transition down to the basement where the action is.
“In the main bar area, we deployed four Blackline X10 pole mounted from the ceiling on acoustic brackets, with two SX212 subwoofers with acoustic yokes firing down,” Jones explained. “In the Private Function Area, we used eight Blackline X8, wall mounted, with three SX210 subs mounted to the ceiling to provide a nice low energy.”
The mezzanine level houses toilet areas and here various ADORN ACS-40TS ceiling speakers and A40T have been deployed with a pair of ADORN A55T lining the customer routes to the toilet. This ensures customers remain immersed in the sound field wherever they are in this vast space.
MSL have delivered an elegant and nimble solution. Thanks to their own integration, at one touch of a button they have total system control over the entire venue, and can change presets as necessary as well as carry out diagnostics remotely. “Being able to monitor the system remotely over a Cloud is invaluable,” he says.
Finally, of course, MSL have provided plenty of headroom with a generous provision of Dante wall input points for iPods — as well as two DJ points complementing the existing Pioneer DJ set-up. “The ease of the Dante network, and expandability of the system — with so many redundant Cat6 network cables — means we can always add more input points,” he concludes.
Commenting on the installation, Toby Cowan, Fairgame’s COO, added, “We couldn’t be happier with the end result. MSL and Toby were great to work with, and the quality of the AV infrastructure is exceptional.”
Footnote: It was recently announced that Ten Entertainment Group, the Tenpin brand operator, which is backed by US private equity firm Trive Capital, has acquired Fairgame, from Richard Hilton, the founder of Gymbox, in a deal that is understood to value the business at circa £40m.
Photographer: Perry Graham