Troy, Michigan’s Ocean Prime has been serving steak, seafood, and cocktails in the greater Detroit area for nearly a decade. After working with a frustrating, opaque user control sound reinforcement/music playback system, the management team asked A/V integration firm Bicco Systems, located in Pickerington, Ohio, for an upgrade.
Bicco Systems turned to Ashly Audio’s eight-channel Pema 8250.70 combined-Protea DSP/amplifier.
Moreover, Bicco Systems combined the two Pema 8250.70s with a dozen Ashly neWR-5 wall-mounted user controls that allow Ocean Prime associates and/or its live musicians to intuitively select input sources and adjust volumes in different zones.
“One of the things that’s unique about Ocean Prime’s Troy location is that it has five private dining rooms that get used on a daily basis,” explains Lee Collett, president of Bicco Systems. “The restaurant also has a live pianist who performs on the weekend. Associates seemed to be routinely frustrated by the inability to easily switch between the live performance feed and the background music feed. When the musician took a fifteen-minute break, someone would have to run back to the equipment rack to make the switch, which they didn’t always manage to do successfully. So, Ocean Prime wanted a system update and an intuitive way to control the system that anyone could successfully use.”
The restaurant has multiple zones across the main dining room, the entrance, the bar, the bathrooms, and the five private dining rooms, each of which can be subdivided to create up to eight smaller spaces.
Bicco Systems went through and re-cut all of the leads to the existing 70-Volt Klipsch loudspeakers, which were otherwise still performing well. They pulled out the old DSP and amplifiers and replaced them with two Ashly Pema 8250.70s, which together deliver sixteen 250-Watt 70V network amplifier channels and powerful Ashly Protea 8×8 matrix DSP in four total rack spaces.
“Ashly was the ideal choice for Ocean Prime because Ashly has been in business for 43 years and has proven reliability and fidelity,” Collett says. “More specifically, Ashly’s user controllers offer customized, intuitive control that Ocean Prime was hoping for.”
An existing media server is the main input to the system, but the staff also has the ability to play CDs or to jack in their phones, iPads, etc. In addition, the piano and its vocal microphone serve as inputs when the musician is playing.
There are two Ashly neWR-5 controllers by the piano that allow the musician to switch the house and/or dining room feeds between the live music and the background music source. The other ten Ashly neWR-5s are located in the other zones and can select among input sources and change overall volume.
In addition, the screens and presentation systems in the private dining rooms send their audio feeds to the Ashly system, which allow them to play over the higher-fidelity, distributed Klipsch loudspeakers instead of the television speakers.
Visit Ashly Audio at InfoComm booth #5249
