END.

Founded in 2005, END is one of the UK’s leading fashion and design destination retail brands, originally conceived to serve discerning customers in the Northeast of England and now with stores in London, Milan, and Glasgow as well as Newcastle.

Recently added to the group is a flagship store in Manchester. The new location displays all the expected END aesthetic signatures – ultra modern lines, crisp, clean lighting and an audio system that is both discreet and high-performing.

The audio installation was designed, installed, and commissioned by Tyne and Wear-based Blaydon Communications and centres around a speaker system from Audio Pro Business that, in Blaydon MD Paul Dougherty’s words, “sounds superb, looks as good and helps create an in-store ambience to encourage customers to stay longer.”

With brands mindful of every aspect of the customer experience these days, the sonic character of the store was important, as Dougherty explained, “END, as with other retailers, need complete control of their brand. They want to ensure safe music is played into the store with no profanities and the genre of music must be in line with brand and customer demographic. To achieve this, the client provided a small audio streaming unit that would provide a music feed to the store – once in store, we would take over and distribute that as required.

Although the same music was required throughout, zoning was still required to ensure a balance of audio volume levels. The zones for this project were ground floor retail space, first floor retail space, and changing areas.”

APB’s wireless speaker line-up is designed to make installation and control as simple as possible, with individual units being plugged into existing retail lighting track, negating the need for additional power cabling. And with everything from subs to compact full-range speakers on offer, in both black and white finishes, and operating on 1.9 GHz, an APB system is easy to fit into a commercial situation.

The APB system installed at END Manchester included 12 SP-1 wireless speakers, nine SP-3 2-way bass reflex speakers, four subs (both 8-inch and 6.5-inch versions) and two SPW-5 ceiling/wall-mount speakers, all installed on END’s existing lighting track, enabling fast, efficient, cablefree installation. The entire system was specified in white – including transmitters and volume controls – to match the clean, modern END styling in store.

“APB provides a way to achieve simple zoning without installing any cabling,” said Dougherty, “The store had a lighting track installation that was compatible with the APB brand, making installation of the entire system extremely quick and painless. In addition, retail spaces are often dynamic and regularly change in layout - with the APB products the sound system can be just as dynamic as the retail space, allowing loudspeakers to be easily moved or added to as required.

“The APB solution is a superb hybrid system that sits nicely between the domestic and commercial worlds. It offers the audio quality and control of domestic systems but has a robustness and ease of installation that is ideal for commercial environments. Whilst it may be a little more expensive than wired solutions, the ease of installation more than offsets those additional costs.

“Wired systems obviously need cables installed, then a bracket fitted to the wall, speakers installed and connected, then you need a separate amplifier too. With the APB product you simply set which channel you want to pair the system too, clip it into the lighting track, hit the pair button, then sit back and enjoy some high-quality music. It’s a great solution for high-end and time-pressured installations.” www.www.audiopro.com

 New, extremely silent nozzle

Noise at max. output: 82.5 dBA

 Constant fog output at any pump level due to the use of two pumps

 Control via Ethernet, DMX512, analogue (0-10V) or directly at the machine

 RDM-capable

 Touchscreen with simple navigation

 Finest adjustments of the output

 Adjustable pump characteristic: Impulse, Extended, Flood, Continuous

 Adjustable performance curve to balance different fog amounts

 Internal Timer

 Internal working hour meter

 3100 W, 230V/50Hz

With a range of programmes, exercise equipment, and professional instructors, Legacy has expanded to include facilities in Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, Coral Gables, and Wynwood in Florida. Manning Sumner is the founder and CEO of Legacy Fitness. After years of training professional athletes and celebrities, Sumner developed a fitness system called Partner Interval Training (P.I.T.) that made professional-level fitness results accessible to everyone. Music is an integral part of the programmes, and this is precisely why sound reinforcement systems from DAS Audio were selected, which include models from the company’s ACTION-500 Series, ARTEC Series, and E11EVEN Sound by DAS Audio product line.

The Wynwood facility also serves as Legacy’s headquarters. In addition to housing Sumner’s office, there are staff administration offices, a conference room, a podcast room, a cold plunge facility, sauna, IV Suite & Smoothie Bar, as well as the open gym. In this location, the DAS Audio system includes eight ARTEC-310.96 compact two-way wide array enclosures, eight ARTEC-308 wide-range two-way passive systems, plus four ESBR18 passive direct radiation subwoofers from the E11EVEN Sound by DAS Audio catalogue. E11EVEN Sound by DAS Audio EP-6K4 amplifiers power the system, with signal processing from BSS Audio. At Legacy’s Fort Lauderdale location, the DAS Audio equipment deployed includes six E11EVEN Sound by DAS Audio ES-10 2-way point source loudspeaker enclosures mated with two ACTION-S18 passive direct radiation subwoofers. Like the Wynwood location, E11EVEN Sound by DAS Audio EP-6K4 amplifiers power the system, with signal processing from BSS Audio. The Legacy Pembroke Pines facility meanwhile has a similar setup to Fort Lauderdale.

When asked about the performance of the various DAS Audio sound systems, Sumner was complimentary: “At each location, the one most important and consistent factor regarding the quality of sound is the clear, natural, and balanced performance. As you move about the various spaces, the sound is very consistent.”

In charge of the installation was Guillermo “Willy” Rodriguez, owner/operator of Willy-Tech Services of Miami, FL, an A/V system integration services firm and E11EVEN Sound certified installer. He was supported by DAS Audio’s John Fiorito, who designed, managed, and commissioned all Legacy Fit installations, and Geovanni Ortiz, DAS Audio’s Applications Engineer and certified Rational Acoustic SMAART engineer, who handled loudspeaker optimisation in each location, as well as Santiago Ruiz, certified BSS Audio programmer.

“Adding DAS elevated that experience and gave us superior sound quality to complement our business model,” Sumner said. “Both our staff and customers are very pleased with the results.” www.dasaudio.com

COMPANY: NEXO

LOCATION: Leonberg, Germany

Located in the southern German town of Leonberg, Bowl & Co takes bowling to a whole new level. Visitors can enjoy a choice of 18 lanes, with state-of-the-art Spark technology on eight lanes enabling the projection of custom photographs, game results and stats directly onto the lane.

Central to the delivery of a thrilling visitor experience is a NEXO ID Series sound system installed by local audio-visual technology specialists Fein.Media.

Designed in collaboration with the Nexo Engineering Support team, the system provides the power and headroom to go way beyond background music and announcements, creating a party atmosphere in the venue, particularly on the regular DJ nights.

“Each pair of lanes is covered by a pair of Nexo’s compact ID24 speakers, with a pair of IDS110 subs in cardioid mode for every two double lanes,” said Mario Schmidt, Planning and Sales Manager at Karlsruhe-based Fein Media. “In addition, six ID24s are complemented by a further three IDS110 subs in the restaurant and lounge areas.”

Amplification and processing come from a rack of seven Nexo NXAMP4X1Mk2 powered controllers in a Dante network with a matrix mixer and wall-mounted control panels.