Zinc upgrades sound and light systems

The Zinc nightclub at Dubai’s Crowne Plaza has had its sound and lighting system upgraded over Ramadan by Phoenix & Liberty Acoustic and Services (formerly known as Liberty Acoustics and Services).

The project initially started as a regular Ramadan service for the sound and lighting systems, but soon escalated as the scale of the issues became apparent. ‘The sound system needed some re-calibrating and a few drivers to be replaced, but after four years of use it was not in too bad a state,’ explained Phoenix & Liberty Acoustic and Services’ managing director/owner, Mark Legaspi. The real problem came with the lights: ‘They had more than 30 lighting fixtures hanging but only eight to 10 were actually operational, ’ recalled Mr Legaspi.

It was a 25-day project, but only 10 were working days on site. To meet the challenge of this refit, the company set up a temporary repair bay at the club where it could dismantle, repair, clean, test and rewire the 30+ lighting fixtures, four hangs of EV XLD (three per hang), 12 ZX1s,four X Subs and 13 EV RL amplifiers. As this was such a tight timescale, the Phoenix & Liberty Acoustics team and its hired EV line-array system’s consultant Kiran Tauro needed to work on the refit at the same time as the interior contractor was redecorating. This led to a number of challenges, such as having only two days prior to the re-opening to install 60 LED strips and four new 575 scanners, as well as doing the lighting programming, sound testing, line testing, and phase testing.

The thing that Mr Legaspi is most proud of is the way his team worked for this and the other simultaneous projects the company was involved with. ‘I have a crew of seven and we had six contracts to finish in 30 days,’ he explained. ‘We successfully opened all six projects in only 26 days.’

One feature that helped with the quick timescale was the Dynacord P64 1500 installed for processing, filtering and routing the sound system. ‘The thing that we really like about it is its network capability via LAN, we can do a system check directly in front of the speakers and move across the room wirelessly to adjust it in real time,’ enthused Mr Lagaspi. ‘It’s a very responsive wireless control processor, it made our job a whole lot easier, given the site condition and the very limited programming time frame that was given to us.’ Mr Legaspi believes the processor has made the EV system sound like new, and with the refreshed lighting system he feels Zinc ‘looks like a club once again’.

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