Privately owned by local Berkshire entrepreneur Duane Clark, Bar Indigo comprises two discrete areas; a separate bar and chill-out zone at the front of the club, and a much larger bar and dancefloor at the back. The long tunnel-like shape of the club premises ensures a great architectural space, but also offered, "fairly foul acoustics" for sound installer Paul Knight of Ascot Audio.
"The reverb time is horrendous, like being in a cave," says Knight. "The only solution was to get everyone as near to a direct source as possible, so that the reflections don't come into play."
Knight chose NEXO's PS8 loudspeaker for the job, installing 12 cabinets in the larger bar and beside the dancefloor, with four more PS8 units custom-sprayed in white and ceiling-mounted in the front bar. "There isn't a better small box than the NEXO PS8; if there is, I haven't heard it," says Knight. "The shape of the vault dictated the sound design somewhat, we couldn't put them all down one wall, so they are fixed on either side of the room, mounted high up on the arches and angled quite sharply down at the dancefloor."
The new Tecton Series power amplifiers from Camco power the system. Ascot Audio used two Tecton 24.4 models to run four PS8s, and a Tecton 32.4 to run two 1000W subs. The rest of the system is powered by Crown K2s, each running four PS8s. Knight suggests that: "there is plenty of headroom"!
The whole Bar Indigo system is processed by BSS Soundweb, which handles the zoning into three areas (front bar, main bar and dancefloor), the crossover to the bass bins, and the EQ ("not that there's a lot of it".)
Currently opening five nights a week, in its first month of trading, Bar Indigo has already made its mark on the Windsor mainstream. The location is an excellent showcase for local installation company Ascot Audio, which has also equipped the Vanilla Bar, just a few hundred yards up the street.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
