As the owners of Victory Brewing Company are fond of pointing out, American beer has been the butt of many a European joke. Since starting out 12 years ago, the Downingtown, Penn.-based company has made great strides toward refuting that stereotype, with more than 15 of the company’s acclaimed brews garnering rave reviews and a reputation far beyond that of a typical microbrewery.
The newly-renovated Victory Brew Pub serves up the company’s regular and seasonal beers, along with a full lunch, dinner and barbecue menu. While a wide range of sporting events are always available on the Pub’s multiple large-screen TVs, there’s a distinctive family-oriented design to the place, with two main dining areas and a conference room adjoining the large bar area and great sound coming from the high-end audio system.
“They came in and asked us to design a system for them twice, and we turned them down twice,” says Paul Moyer of Pottsville, Penn.-based Moyer Electronics, the company behind the newly-designed sound system. “It was pretty far from our offices, and we suggested they find someone more local to them. But they talked to two other companies and weren’t happy with what they came up with, and when they asked us a third time, we said okay.”
As Moyer explains, the brewery owners had a pretty clear idea of what they wanted in a sound system. “They were looking for a system that delivered good sound and even coverage across the entire venue, rather than perfect sound in a single spot. The other contractors they’d spoken to all submitted system designs that would have been ideal for a concert venue, but this is an environment with multiple zones, each with different acoustical characteristics. The bar area is very open, with plenty of background noise; there are some areas with high ceilings and lots of reflective surfaces, and others with more carpeting and finished ceilings. People are moving around, or they’re sitting at tables located in different parts of the room. How many people in a restaurant are going to be sitting in the sweet spot?”
Moyer addressed the main areas by designing a 70 volt distributed system based around 24 of Community’s VERIS6 full-range two-way loudspeakers. “The VERIS provides a nice even coverage and it sounds unbelievably good for music and voice,” says Moyer. “It’s a perfect system for the main seating areas and the bar area. It’s got a nice wide dispersion, so it’s hard to get too far off axis. No matter where you’re sitting you get a full range sound.”
Suspended by chains from the high, unfinished ceiling, the cabinets blend nicely with the pub’s open architecture. “The VERIS speakers have a really nice, streamlined design that really complements the décor,” Moyer adds.
The conference room and arcade areas, all of which have a more finished, dropped ceiling look, are served by Community CLOUD series 6-inch ceiling speakers. The system is powered by several Bogen X450 Black Max 70 volt amplifiers. Four Nady GEQ-31 31-band equalizers and a single Sabine Graphi-Q2 GRQ-3122 31-band equalizer provide for shaping the sound to compensate for the different areas’ acoustical characteristics. A Bogen PM3000 digitally matrixed pre-amp enables routing between multiple audio sources and voice paging, as well as automatically reducing the music level so customers can hear when their tables are ready.
“We were really pleased with the way the system sounded, right out of the box,” says Moyer. “As the old saying goes, another satisfied customer.”
