Vic’s Las Vegas, live jazz club and Italian-American restaurant opened by Porchlight Hospitality earlier this year in the city’s downtown Symphony Park, is outfitted with a sound reinforcement system incorporating Alcons Audio pro-ribbon loudspeakers
Porchlight Hospitality’s first venue was Stoney’s Rockin’ Country, which opened in 2007, and it was where company CEO Chris Lowdon first came across Alcons Audio. “Matthew Breunig, monitor engineer for The Killers, is a key part of the Stoney’s team and was alerted to Alcons by Killers FOH engineer Kenny Kaiser, who had checked out the LR18 system at California’s Bottle Rock festival in 2016,” Lowdon explains. “We arranged for Alcons North America sales manager David Rahn to demonstrate the system at Stoney’s and I fell in love with the sound.”
As a result of the demo, Porchlight Hospitality contracted AVL Solutions of Greenville, SC to supply and install a new system utilizing Alcons at Stoney’s, and since then, Lowdon has worked with Rahn to design multiple systems for further venues. Vic’s is now his fifth venue with Alcons pro-ribbon loudspeakers.
Porchlight Hospitality contracted architect Adrian Jones of JONA Architecture & Design Group to design the main dining room, with acoustics by Sam Berkow of SIA Acoustics. “As is typical for a high-end, intimate jazz club, we designed the system to support acoustic performances and not overpower the room,” says Rahn. “In the main room we specified an L-C-R system comprising three VR12/90 mid-size versatile monitors. These are suspended from a truss at the front of the stage, the left/right units are mounted horizontally and mirror imaged, while the center unit is mounted vertically to maintain consistent off axis response. They are complemented by a pair of floor-mounted BF121 compact subwoofers.”
In addition, a 14-seat private VIP dining room offering a view of the stage has a stereo pair of VR5 compact loudspeakers with a single BF121 subwoofer, while an outside seating is covered by three more VR5s. All loudspeakers are powered and managed by four Sentinel3 and one Sentinel10 amplified loudspeaker controllers.
“Although this is my fifth Alcons system, while I already knew that its clarity and fidelity would be second to none, I was interested to see how the pro-ribbon technology sounded in a dedicated jazz venue, where tone and detail really matter,” Lowdon notes. “We set out to build the very best jazz venue, built for musicians and jazz aficionados with excellent food and beverages, and were very humbled to have Vic’s named ‘Best Jazz Club’ by Vegas Magazine. A lot of credit for this goes to David, Sam and the Alcons pro-ribbon system. As Sam says, ‘We worked on the design of Vic’s to help musicians and audiences create and share magical moments’. So many jazz greats are friends of my father and they are excited to come and play here.”
