Chef Richard Sandoval’s Toro Toro Pan-Latin Steakhouse in Washington, D.C., features Central and South American cuisine upstairs with 5,000-square-foot, New York-style “super lounge” downstairs.
A new sound system featuring Fulcrum Acoustic loudspeakers ensures that patrons of the late-night venue can fully enjoy the music and hear announcements.
“The Toro Toro team wanted a high-fidelity system that would set them apart from the competition, so they came to us,” explains Randy White, senior buyer for Pro Audio, Lighting, and D.J. at Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center. “I’ve used a lot of Fulcrum Acoustic speakers, and I knew they would be perfect for the room.”
White explains the room’s unusual acoustical challenges.
“It’s an underground, rectangular space with a nine to ten-foot ceiling and lots of hard surfaces. As soon as you reach the bottom of the stairs, you’re on the dance floor, which wraps around a cage surrounding the stairwell. The DJ booth is on a raised stage, with a big light show behind that. Because of the room’s layout and the high sound-pressure levels required, we went with a distributed system, which has worked very well.”
To handle the main area, White placed two Fulcrum Acoustic M-Series dual 12-inch coaxial loudspeakers. The M is a 3-way coaxial system with 75° x 75° dispersion. It’s a small system, just 15.4 inches (39 cm) tall, designed to deliver a visceral impact at high SPLs. Its low-frequency transducer provides maximum mid-bass impact. To handle sub lows, White installed three Fulcrum Acoustic TS215 dual-15-inch, direct-radiating subwoofers into the front of the stage.
White chose a mixture of Fulcrum Acoustic S-Series and P-Series loudspeakers to fill the areas around the banquettes and the sides of the dance floor. The S-Series is a three-way, dual, 8-inch coaxial loudspeaker with a very wide (100° x 100°) dispersion pattern, mated with a 1.7-inch titanium compression driver. Its horizontal orientation, small vertical dimension, and trapezoidal shape allow it to be positioned extremely close to surfaces, and its low profile makes it very useful as a front fill system.
The Fulcrum P-Series is a two-way system that employs a single 8-inch coaxial with 100° x 100° dispersion and a 1.7-inch tweeter. It’s even more compact than the S-Series and operates at 16 ohms, making it ideal for low-impedance distributed systems where a high loudspeaker-to-amplifier ratio is desirable.
To support the S-Series and P-Series loudspeakers, White selected Fulcrum US212 dual 12-inch direct-radiating subwoofers. The US212’s enclosure is perfect for installation into small cavities or banquettes, as at Toro Toro. “Since they’re fills, the P’s, S’s, and US212s are tucked away,” he explains.
Lab.gruppen power amplifiers, rack-mounted in an air-conditioned room, drive the system. The speakers are managed using Symetrix DSP.
“The Toro Toro system is capable of 145 to 148 dB,” White notes. “We actually had to roll the three TS215s subs back because when we were tuning them, the low frequencies were knocking bottles off the bar upstairs. On a night with a full house, the system runs on at 35 percent because it has so much headroom. Even better, the Fulcrum loudspeakers are so well focused that although the sound on the dance floor runs around 130 dB, you can still talk off the dance floor.”
As always, the bottom line is a satisfied client. “The Fulcrum system delivers great coverage and fidelity for Toro Toro,” concludes White. “They’re very happy.”