Martin Audio AQ offers audio solution for Radisson Edwardian restaurant

The Radisson Edwardian Guildford Hotel’s MKB bar and restaurant has recently installed a Martin Audio AQ system to fulfil its status as both a lunchtime bistro and a destination bar.

The venue describes itself as an all-day Mediterranean café, offering relaxed local bistro-dining at lunchtime, turning into a cosmopolitan evening destination. In order to maintain this effect as a multi-faceted location, a sound system was required that could provide hi-fi music at a low level during the day, while pumping energy into the bar lounge during the evening.

With these considerations taken into account, a Martin Audio AQ system was specified by Gavin Miller of Bedford-based Kazbar Systems after he had been approached via a mutual contact at the Ministry of Sound.

“The Ministry runs exclusively on Martin Audio, and just about every decent venue I go to seems to have the Martin Audio badge,” he said. “I have worked with Martin Audio in the past and it’s a brand I know and trust. Fortunately with a short time scale, they were able to deliver.”

Miller brought in Darrin South from installation team 33 Hertz, and with Martin Audio’s Kevin McNally offering support, they set about designing a system that would function through the trading day at three sound levels preset into the Martin Audio Engineer 818 DSP controller (and 8 x 8 routing matrix), which accesses the different zones into which bar, lounge and restaurant are divided.

However, the installation team’s biggest challenge was to ensure that the sound did not escape into the hotel’s 183 rooms and suites. As a result, an AQ28 was mounted on each of the four walls, with a fifth below the raised DJ and VIP area. As this is a two-way, dual-bass driver, designed to give extended LF performance from a compact, architecturally neutral, vented enclosure, the system can operate either with the additional floor-mounted AQ215 (2 x 15in) sub enabled, or alternatively without.

Additionally, four AQ5’s were mounted around a pillar on a separate zone in the adjacent restaurant/grill to provide 360° coverage from a single point source.

Furhtermore,the AQ28’s and AQ215 are also powered by Martin Audio MA3.0 amplification and the AQ5’s by an MA2.0, via the Engineer 818.