Turbosound installations

Club Rio

Venue: Club Rio
Location: Las Vegas, USA
Venue-type: Nightclub
Loudspeaker systems:
Floodlight series
TSW series

The Rio Hotel and Casino is home to the busiest showroom in Las Vegas, and three nights a week it transforms into Club Rio, one of the hottest nightclubs in the city.
Boasting the most sophisticated visual technology immersion rooms on or off the Strip, the 30,000 square-foot showroom sees over 90 hours per week of production for three full-time productions in addition to Club Rio. Problematically, all performances shared the same ten-year old flown cluster. So when the club decided to install a dedicated club system second-to-none, they turned to Las Vegas system's contractor The Wave and a Turbosound Floodlight system.

Over the last five years, Scott Fisher and his audio design sales and rental firm known as The Wave, have specified, sold and installed some of the hottest club systems in a town where everyone demands the best. Some of The Wave's more prominent installs include: Club Utopia, Bikini's at the Rio Hotel and Casino, RA at the Luxor, Tequila Joe's at the Imperial Palace, Coyote Ugly and others - all done in the last three years and all using Turbosound rigs. Scott's many years of experience in all forms of audio eventually led him back to a basic understanding learned early in life that would be key to his future success. "A lot of the nightclubs that were being built as I was starting to go to were designed by people that came from the live industry, and although sound is sound, what was required in order to please the crowd and work in a nightclub isn't the same as what you need on a live tour," explained Fisher.

The 30,000 square-foot showroom that becomes Club Rio is virtually in the round with the stage interrupting the circular flow at one end. Its basic form is three descending levels with the first two being seating and bar areas, and the lowest being Club Rio's dance floor or seating for performances. The demands of Club Rio taxed the system the hardest, often resulting in blown subwoofers and other components. "It was a matter of them wanting a completely separate sound system for Club Rio that was very full and powerful and would hold up under the heavy use of high SPL dance music and guest deejays," said Scott.

Darrell Clulow, technical supervisor and lighting engineer for the Scinta Showroom, (the nationally famous Scinta Family Review held in the same space as Club Rio) at the Rio for the last two years was instrumental in moving the process along between Fisher and the Rio. Clulow and Fisher had formed a strong professional mutual respect working on the system upgrade in Bikini's nightclub, which is in but not owned by the Rio. "The food and beverage staff assigned to the Club Rio Showroom began asking why the room didn't sound as good as Bikini's. I told them it was because their FOH systems was being used as a club system and it just wasn't designed to handle that type of club sound," explained Clulow.

Around this time, Clulow invited Fisher down to Club Rio to see what could be done with a Turbosound system there, as Club Rio owners were adamant about returning the room to its former place at the top of the club list in Vegas. To do this, Fisher specified eight Turbosound Floodlight TFL-760Ht mid/high cabinets and eight TSW-718i dual 18 subs fed by two Turbosound LMS-D6 two in/six out system controllers. Amps are four Crest Audio Pro Series 9001 for subs, two 8001 for low mids, two 7001s for high/mids and two 4601s for the highs. All new cabling was pulled for the install with the Rio's existing Soundcraft Series Five routing signal either to the FOH system or the Turbosound system for the Club Rio. The tight budget prompted the Rio food and beverage management to ask if using the old system's power amps was an option. "I explained to them the amps were insufficient to adequately power the new subs, and the new Crests were imperative to achieve their goals," added Scott.

The Turbosound TFL-760Ht is a three-way medium dispersion mid/high cabinet with a powerful 12-inch low/mid cone working in conjunction with Turbosound's Axehead Waveguide Technology handling frequencies from 180Hz to 1.3kHz. High mids in excess of 8kHz are covered by a specially designed 6.5-inch speaker while highs up to 20kHz are handled by a one-inch VHF compression driver. The TFL-760Ht is a trapezoidal version ideal for applications where extremely tight arrays are required as in Club Rio. Fisher's goal in terms of primary coverage was the dance floor and the seating tier just above with the same coverage but slightly less SPLs. A compromise had to be reached on the speaker location as the client's coverage area of prime interest changed between system order and arrival for install. "They wanted music in the whole room, but I needed the eight top boxes to cover the dance floor, so we moved them farther back to cover the second tier as well as the dance floor primarily," explained Scott.

Although most corporate entertainment complexes like the Rio have skilled technical staffs and riggers on staff or call, the proprietary Turbosound rigging hardware proved a simple assembly even though casino staff were working with it for the first time. After a discussion with Fisher and a visit to the Turbosound website, the staff assembled hardware in about ten minutes. Scott arrived the day of install to find the top boxes already flown to his specifications. Dance floor to ceiling height is nearly thirty feet, so top cabinets hang above the upper tier nearest the ceiling and nearly to the outer wall. This allowed for the coverage and volume the club wanted on both the dance floor and second tier.

For the low-end, the Rio staff designed and built a total of four new custom dance platforms for the dance floor with each platform having two of the TSW-718i subs and a single Crest 9001 installed inside. Two of the dance platforms are portable while two are removable for other productions. Each platform is positioned every 90 degrees around the circular dance floor for the Club Rio setup. "At that point I directed the technical staff on exact positioning for the mid/high cabinets, turned on the system and walked the room looking for any uneven coverage spots, making adjustments wherever was needed," said Scott.

With a different deejay, music and playback sources every night, Scott needed to find a good compromise point for certain frequencies. The challenge was finding a reasonable balance in the levels between everything; so minor adjustments happen at the deejay mixer or the channel strip on the house mixers feeding the system. Tuning was a simple affair of two hours on a Wednesday morning using his ears. "I was there every night the first week doing fine tweaking, but things changed little from original setup as the well designed room sounded the same full as it did empty," explained Fisher.

Time alignment, crossover and limiting are handled by the Turbosound LMS-D6 system controllers with programming also being easy by Scott's account. Rio Hotel and Casino technical director, Mark Testa, then chose personal lockout codes. Being in a casino prohibited testing maximum upper limits of the system, but opening day saw 114dB continuous on the dance floor with peaks of 121dB. "I honestly don't know what it is really capable of as we haven't run it up to clipping levels, but I'm sure we could get up to 125dB as it's all well-powered and the Turbosound speakers are more than capable of handling it." said Scott.

	Club Rio

	Venue: Club Rio Location: Las Vegas, USA Venue-type: Nightclub Loudspeaker systems: Floodlight series TSW series

	The Rio Hotel and Casino is home to the busiest showroom in Las Vegas, and three nights a week it transforms into Club Rio, one of the hottest nightclubs in the city. Boasting the most sophisticated visual technology immersion rooms on or off the Strip, the 30,000 square-foot showroom sees over 90 hours per week of production for three full-time productions in addition to Club Rio. Problematically, all performances shared the same ten-year old flown cluster. So when the club decided to install a dedicated club system second-to-none, they turned to Las Vegas system's contractor The Wave and a Turbosound Floodlight system. Over the last five years, Scott Fisher and his audio design sales and rental firm known as The Wave, have specified, sold and installed some of the hottest club systems in a town where everyone demands the best. Some of The Wave's more prominent installs include: Club Utopia, Bikini's at the Rio Hotel and Casino, RA at the Luxor, Tequila Joe's at the Imperial Palace, Coyote Ugly and others - all done in the last three years and all using Turbosound rigs. Scott's many years of experience in all forms of audio eventually led him back to a basic understanding learned early in life that would be key to his future success. "A lot of the nightclubs that were being built as I was starting to go to were designed by people that came from the live industry, and although sound is sound, what was required in order to please the crowd and work in a nightclub isn't the same as what you need on a live tour," explained Fisher. The 30,000 square-foot showroom that becomes Club Rio is virtually in the round with the stage interrupting the circular flow at one end. Its basic form is three descending levels with the first two being seating and bar areas, and the lowest being Club Rio's dance floor or seating for performances. The demands of Club Rio taxed the system the hardest, often resulting in blown subwoofers and other components. "It was a matter of them wanting a completely separate sound system for Club Rio that was very full and powerful and would hold up under the heavy use of high SPL dance music and guest deejays," said Scott. Darrell Clulow, technical supervisor and lighting engineer for the Scinta Showroom, (the nationally famous Scinta Family Review held in the same space as Club Rio) at the Rio for the last two years was instrumental in moving the process along between Fisher and the Rio. Clulow and Fisher had formed a strong professional mutual respect working on the system upgrade in Bikini's nightclub, which is in but not owned by the Rio. "The food and beverage staff assigned to the Club Rio Showroom began asking why the room didn't sound as good as Bikini's. I told them it was because their FOH systems was being used as a club system and it just wasn't designed to handle that type of club sound," explained Clulow. Around this time, Clulow invited Fisher down to Club Rio to see what could be done with a Turbosound system there, as Club Rio owners were adamant about returning the room to its former place at the top of the club list in Vegas. To do this, Fisher specified eight Turbosound Floodlight TFL-760Ht mid/high cabinets and eight TSW-718i dual 18 subs fed by two Turbosound LMS-D6 two in/six out system controllers. Amps are four Crest Audio Pro Series 9001 for subs, two 8001 for low mids, two 7001s for high/mids and two 4601s for the highs. All new cabling was pulled for the install with the Rio's existing Soundcraft Series Five routing signal either to the FOH system or the Turbosound system for the Club Rio. The tight budget prompted the Rio food and beverage management to ask if using the old system's power amps was an option. "I explained to them the amps were insufficient to adequately power the new subs, and the new Crests were imperative to achieve their goals," added Scott. The Turbosound TFL-760Ht is a three-way medium dispersion mid/high cabinet with a powerful 12-inch low/mid cone working in conjunction with Turbosound's Axehead Waveguide Technology handling frequencies from 180Hz to 1.3kHz. High mids in excess of 8kHz are covered by a specially designed 6.5-inch speaker while highs up to 20kHz are handled by a one-inch VHF compression driver. The TFL-760Ht is a trapezoidal version ideal for applications where extremely tight arrays are required as in Club Rio. Fisher's goal in terms of primary coverage was the dance floor and the seating tier just above with the same coverage but slightly less SPLs. A compromise had to be reached on the speaker location as the client's coverage area of prime interest changed between system order and arrival for install. "They wanted music in the whole room, but I needed the eight top boxes to cover the dance floor, so we moved them farther back to cover the second tier as well as the dance floor primarily," explained Scott. Although most corporate entertainment complexes like the Rio have skilled technical staffs and riggers on staff or call, the proprietary Turbosound rigging hardware proved a simple assembly even though casino staff were working with it for the first time. After a discussion with Fisher and a visit to the Turbosound website, the staff assembled hardware in about ten minutes. Scott arrived the day of install to find the top boxes already flown to his specifications. Dance floor to ceiling height is nearly thirty feet, so top cabinets hang above the upper tier nearest the ceiling and nearly to the outer wall. This allowed for the coverage and volume the club wanted on both the dance floor and second tier. For the low-end, the Rio staff designed and built a total of four new custom dance platforms for the dance floor with each platform having two of the TSW-718i subs and a single Crest 9001 installed inside. Two of the dance platforms are portable while two are removable for other productions. Each platform is positioned every 90 degrees around the circular dance floor for the Club Rio setup. "At that point I directed the technical staff on exact positioning for the mid/high cabinets, turned on the system and walked the room looking for any uneven coverage spots, making adjustments wherever was needed," said Scott. With a different deejay, music and playback sources every night, Scott needed to find a good compromise point for certain frequencies. The challenge was finding a reasonable balance in the levels between everything; so minor adjustments happen at the deejay mixer or the channel strip on the house mixers feeding the system. Tuning was a simple affair of two hours on a Wednesday morning using his ears. "I was there every night the first week doing fine tweaking, but things changed little from original setup as the well designed room sounded the same full as it did empty," explained Fisher. Time alignment, crossover and limiting are handled by the Turbosound LMS-D6 system controllers with programming also being easy by Scott's account. Rio Hotel and Casino technical director, Mark Testa, then chose personal lockout codes. Being in a casino prohibited testing maximum upper limits of the system, but opening day saw 114dB continuous on the dance floor with peaks of 121dB. "I honestly don't know what it is really capable of as we haven't run it up to clipping levels, but I'm sure we could get up to 125dB as it's all well-powered and the Turbosound speakers are more than capable of handling it." said Scott.