The 2,200 total capacity venue has an multi-themed environment, with seven imaginatively designed rooms, ranging from the jazzy, still-life, red French Boudoir suite to the massive 1,000 capacity Vienna Ballroom. The latter is complete with an enormous chandelier centrepiece, opulent feeder bar hall and grand sweeping staircase entrances.
Audio contractors were Liverpool-based Over Audio, who chose JBL speakers for Oceana's main areas - the Vienna Ballroom and the New York Disco area. The requirement for powerful large-volume enclosures for the spherical Vienna Ballroom, which also has a large baclony/VIP area, prompted the selection of JBL Sound Power SP225-6s to make up the room’s two main speaker stacks - six per stack.
The Ballroom is in a listed part of the building that now encompasses Oceana, dating back originally to the Art Deco heyday of the early 1930s. Consequently nothing could be bolted to the ceilings or walls, and the main sound system is ground stacked, with all speakers ensconced in customized scenic enclosures.
Sound design in a circular room is always a great challenge, and the Sound Power speakers, with their twin 15" (0.38m) woofers and 70° horn were chosen for both directional qualities and efficient dispersion. This room is completed with four ground-stacked JBL Sound Power SP128 subs for plenty of hard driving bottom end, to pump up the Ballroom’s music policy of club classics and commercial R’n’B. For peripheral infill, four JBL MS112 enclosures from the Marquis Series are fixed to Design Intervention’s lighting rig. A further pair of MS112s are located on the Ballroom’s upper balcony/VIP area, and these, together with the lighting rig speakers, are time aligned to the main system.
The New York Disco area is a splendid three-level 21st century paean to classic Studio 54 style. The space oozes 1970s and 80s pastiche, a mega lightshow, mirrorball mania, a swirling metallic staircase and an LED-panelled dance floor. Over Audio again used JBL, this time four MS112 enclosures and two SP125 subs for the main dance floor.
(Lee Baldock)
