The new Rare 120° restaurant and lounge at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas features a high-fidelity sound system centered on a Symetrix ZoneMix 760 DSP, with convenient operator control via a Symetrix ARC-SWK wall panel.
The exotic wood finishes and brushed stainless steel of the room’s classy Warwick Stone-designed décor form a sonic stage for which the sound system is perfectly tailored. Rutherford Design of Northridge, California designed and installed the multi-input, triple-zone, 70-volt system.
Rutherford used five of the ZoneMix 760’s six outputs for the main dining room loudspeakers, the main dining room subwoofers, the lounge loudspeakers, the lounge subwoofers, and the bathrooms.
In addition, two loudspeakers in a cozy “VIP” dining room take their feed from the main dining room system with a simple attenuator to get the volume right. All of the loudspeakers come from Tannoy 70-volt and coaxial loudspeakers with support from additional Tannoy subwoofers both in the dining room and lounge.
Because of their proximity, all of the zones receive the same input source. The separate outputs and their associated equalization and dynamics processing really serve to tune each element of the system for maximal effect.
“We could have run everything together,” said Rutherford, “but the end result would have been noticeably less smooth. For example, the ZoneMix 760 contains a nine-band parametric EQ on each input and output. By separating the restaurant output from the lounge output, we were able to apply slightly different – and tremendously precise! – EQs to compensate for their different acoustics.”
To control the system, managers use a Symetrix ARC-SWK wall panel with push buttons, menu, and knob to simply select an input source and change its volume. Available inputs include a DJ system, an iPod dock, a DVD player, and a satellite receiver. “Training the staff on the new system took all of 30 seconds, literally,” said Rutherford.
