"The old green boxes gave us great service but we had to own up to the fact that technology has moved on - processing speed has become a lot faster, and there is now greater capacity and more powerful capabilities," says head of technology Sanjeev (Sanj) Bhardwaj. This was something he became aware of last year when he was installing the audio at sister club, matter.
As a result he has just replaced the entire digital network with the new generation BSS Soundweb London BLU solution, using BSS Audio's BLU-Link network transport, endemic to the BLU-160 and BLU-120 devices which are at the heart of the new system. Based on Gigabit Ethernet technology the BLU-Link carries 256 channels of fault-tolerant, low-latency audio at 48kHz/24bit, or 128 channels at 96kHz/24bit across a standard CAT5e connection.
"Originally we had 12 Soundweb SW9088's and three Jellyfish remotes which went in with the original fit-out but now we have a fraction of that number of processors offering much greater processing power. We now have a fully redundant system with clearer audio signal and better control," says Bhardwaj.
"Although I considered other options Soundweb is still the most comfortable programme out there, and in terms of controllability will do things that other platforms wouldn't."
Sanj pays credit to Sound Technology's Dave Bradshaw whom he consulted on the project - drawing on the latter's experience in the nightclub world - and his own sound team of Matt Smith, Keith Reynolds and Nick Thirtle for their input.
Summing up, he says: "The idea of the new Soundweb London and BLU-Link was to future proof the club. I have so many spare outputs and we are still only using 56% of the processing power in Room 2, where we have the TiMax system, 30% in Room 1 and only 18% in Room 3, where more subs have been added.
(Jim Evans)
