All Star Lanes has revolutionised the bowling industry in Britain, and the larger, more luxurious Bayswater site has seen the concept evolve into a flexible space, with eight bowling lanes (including two in a private room), a large sophisticated diner /bistro and glamorous American cocktail bar.
To develop the sophisticated switching and routing of audio and video sources, the owners again turned to the Sound Division Group - who first worked with the Breeden Brothers on their award-winning Lonsdale Bar in Notting Hill.
Technology has moved on apace since then, and the new bar would not only require iPod docking stations - but David Graham's company had to make a generous provision of insert points that on the one hand would accommodate party guests in the private room, wanting to plug in a PlayStation, to those interested in corporate hire, needing to fire up a PowerPoint display for delegates. The functionality also had to apply equally to daytime and night-time use.
SDG opted for a Harman Pro solution (with JBL loudspeakers and Crown amplification), assembling a crack site team - with the reliable Jon Carey project managing (and designing the cabling infrastructure), the experienced Martin Barbour programming the BSS Soundweb London digital control and Elliot Patterson leading SDG's install team.
Decorated by Dan Evans, the venue layout divides itself naturally into four main zones: the Lounge/Diner, Bar/Cocktail Bar, Main Lanes and the two-lane Private Room which can accommodate 80 guests in an overall capacity of 300.
However, in total 14 inputs have been split between the two main areas (Public Bowling Alley/Restaurant and Private Bowling Alley/Bar), designed around the flexible BSS Audio BLU-80 processor (configured for 16 outputs) and BLU-32 expander unit (configured for 16 inputs), backed up by wall-mounted access points.
The specification of Kramer 8 x 8 video matrix switching dictated that the audio control architecture be upgraded from the earlier generation of Soundweb devices used in Bloomsbsury to the more sophisticated and versatile Soundweb London DSP.
The real challenge for Martin Barbour was in making the system easy to use in the knowledge that there would be no dedicated PC - and so he turned to BSS's new BLU-8 wall-mounted controller.
BLU-8s are stationed in the Main Bar and Private Bar, dedicated to those areas and configured such that the 8-way rotary encoder allowed for the audio source to be selected and the four buttons would provide video source select to the plasma and aux video output points. This provides the bar managers with complete audio and video control from a single, intuitive wall panel.
The remaining BLU-8, positioned in an area between the restaurant and main lanes, was configured to allow zone selection via the push buttons and source via the rotary encoder. A simplified BLU-3 source select panel sits at reception.
"This enabled us to mould the operation to suit the venue in an incredibly user friendly manner," says Barbour. "While the arrival of the BLU-8 was the main reason for specifying Soundweb London in this system, at the same time the system's simple external serial control allowed us to integrate seamlessly with the video switching system."
Jon Carey's carefully-worked cabling infrastructure, using two-core speaker cable, Cat 5 to the control and RG59 and VGA for the video signal transport, guaranteed infinite flexibility and ensured that the appliances hooked on the end could be changed or respecified right up to the last minute.
Onto this cabling backbone Sound Division Group specified JBL Control 25AVs in Reception, Diner, corridors and p
