The new restaurant, above last year's much-vaunted Tamarai, completes restaurant entrepreneur Rohit Khattar's mission to combine a restaurant, 5.1 cinema, dance venue, art gallery and corporate entertainment under one roof.
The Sound Division Group was commissioned to install the complex system requirements by the restaurant's parent company Old World Hospitality. The company arrived on site in 2005, soon after Rohit Khattar purchased the former Millennium Club with a view to providing an extravagant sister operation in London to his Chor Bizarre restaurant, which was opened in 1997.
SDG's brief was to create the ultimate in flexibility, says managing director David Graham. To achieve this, SDG divided the two floors into ten separate sound zones, each equipped with the JBL Control series speakers and Crown Xs series amplifiers. The BSS Audio Soundweb London system was installed to link the world of continuous Bollywood films upstairs in Sitaaray with the flexibility of Tamarai. To create this functionality, Graham brought in former BSS Audio Systems Engineer and ace Soundweb London programmer, Martin Barbour, to work alongside project manager Jon Carey.
"The DSP routing was the most complex part of the installation in terms of client requirements and budget," said David Graham. "The client wanted to be able to show any one of the 16 video inputs to any of the 16 screens located around both Tamarai and Sataaray in any configuration."
An HP Procurve in the main rack forms the basis of the network, split into two VLAN's - one for Harman Pro's HiQnet communication, and the other for CobraNet, running at 48kHz and 2.66ms latency. The CobraNet-compatible Soundweb London BLU-80 handles all routing and processing responsibilities, with two BLU-32 break-in/break-out devices providing CobraNet on and off ramps to facilitate the large number of inputs and outputs in the system. The system is controlled by London Architect software, which means that any sound source can be routed to any zone in the building.
Commenting on the system, Martin Barbour says: "Whilst the CobraNet routing is not particularly complex here, the implementation of CobraNet within Soundweb London is probably the most user friendly there is. User-definable bundle names and node to node hyperlinks that allow you to jump from any transmitter to a receiver - and back again - make Soundweb London one of the easiest products to programme a CobraNet system with."
For sound reinforcement, SDG used one AE series AL6125, two 15" subs and four JBL Control 30s for the main entertainment space. These were configured front left, front right, back left and back right for club sound. A further Control 29AV centre speaker, positioned behind the main 10ft wide electric cinema screen, comes into play when the venue operates in cinema mode, and a Lexicon MC4 surround sound processor decodes all the standard cinema formats to generate the 5.1 sound system required.
The bar area is equipped with four JBL Control 28s and an AE series AL6115 single 15" sub. Various quantities of JBL Control 25AV speakers have been specified for the three restaurant areas and Lotus Lounge.
The Tamarai/Sitaaray fit-out, which also involved installing equipment for lighting and vision and DJ/VJ booths, was one of the most complex projects ever undertaken by The Sound Division Group.
"We deployed a highly professional team on this job - from the programmers through to the installers," David Graham adds. "We have provided the venue with ultimate flexibility, enabling it to display Hindi cinema, visual and stil
