Top Chicago restaurant outfitted with Martin Audio
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A $20m build, Gibsons Italia is a high-end, four-storey restaurant, bar and lounge with a dining space for private functions on the roof deck with floor to ceiling windows that offer views of the river and skyline.
Encompass owner Tim Pickett explains: “We were contracted to provide exceptional sound throughout the entire venue and weren’t given a budget because the owners just wanted it to be the highest quality. So, we selected the Martin Audio CDD Series because it’s worked so well for us in other restaurant and club installs.”
Gibson Italia’s ground floor is basically a small entrance with the receptionist and elevators to go up to the other floor - but even in that space there are three CDD6’s to get people used to exceptional sound from the start.
For the luxury bar and lounge on the second floor, there are 22 CDD6’s, four CDD5’s and 12 CDD8’s mounted in the ceiling with brackets and facing out and slightly angled down. The restaurant is located alongside the $500m, 52-storey River Point Complex in the burgeoning West Loop neighbourhood, which is mostly financial offices and law firms. So even though the lounge and bar system is designed for background music, they have an upbeat playlist that ranges from 90s rock to modern pop music - anything that’s uptempo and energetic with “a really good vibe to it.”
Tim maintains that “a tremendous amount of money was spent not only on the sound system, but the owners also insisted on acoustic drywall in the entire place which absorbs sound and optimises intelligibility and clarity throughout the venue, something that was important to them. They wanted people to have conversations but still hear the music.
“CDD was an ideal choice for this project because of its acoustic signature - how it has a wide dispersion pattern as you get closer to the speaker but a narrower pattern as you move away from it which ensures even coverage throughout the venue.
“There is a very high-end dining room on the third floor,” Tim adds, “which has 20 CDD6’s around the perimeter of the space facing out and angled down, and a Martin Audio C6.8T in-ceiling speaker above each booth.
“Then the fourth-floor roof deck which has a larger system equipped with eight Martin Audio CDD10’s and two CSX118 subs. With the extra power and impact, the roof system really sounds amazing, especially when you crank it up!”
(Jim Evans)
