BASEL, Switzerland – The Atlantis in Basel, commonly known as ‘tis, has served as a jazz club, theater, rock and dance club since it moved from its original location as a café in 1947 to Basel's Klosterberg district in 1957. The venue now serves as a club, lounge and restaurant.
Atlantis host Jürg Wartmann and resident DJ Cedric Eichenberger replaced the venue's 10-year-old system with the help of WSDG Europe using gear from Martin Audio to keep the club/lounge/restaurant relevant, fun and neighborly.
"We are longtime fans of ‘tis, and very pleased to be asked to collaborate on their sound upgrade," said Dirk Noy, general manager of WSDG Europe.
"To properly address a multiplicity of issues, we initiated an early planning round table with Jürg Arpagaus from Audio Partner, a specialist in noise limiting and recording, and Alain Müller and Christoph Ritter from system installer M&R Multimedia Productions. Requirements were defined, and a comprehensive sound system design was developed by WSDG engineers Gabriel Hauser and Carlo Fickler.
The most visible (and audible) components of the new system are the loudspeakers. The front system is comprised of two JBL AM6212 – and a 12''/ 3'' application engineered series two-way speaker, chosen via a hearing and measurement test.
The gallery – critical for ceiling height – and the auxiliary zones are covered by 12 JBL AC 28/26 systems – very compact, horizontally installable dual 8''/ 1'' two-way systems. Kling & Freitag 15-inch subwoofer systems were installed under the stage.
A BSS Soundweb London processor with a BLU-160 and BLU-BOB Break Out Box handles electronic signal processing and distribution. Various distributed zone volume controls and a selector switch for operating mode are provided for simple system control. The amplifier rack is stacked with eight Crown I-Tech HD devices.
"The beautiful old buildings in the immediate neighborhood are residential," Noy noted. "And, while no one can expect total silence in the midst of a city center at night, Jürg Wartmann was concerned about maintaining a neighborly peace and quiet."
To accomplish this, WSDG recommended the Martin Audio Engineer – a new audio processor that uses "Residual Pitch," a proprietary psychoacoustic effect, to allow the audience to discern low frequency energy not actually produced by the system.
The overtones of this missing, suppressed or ‘phantom' fundamental frequency lack a specific sound component, but the brain perceives the pitch of a tone by the ratio of its higher harmonics.
Ultimately, listeners in the club are unaware of the "Residual Pitch" effect, but the club's neighbors benefit from a subtle adjustment in volume. The installation is a first for the processor in Switzerland.
As a "fail safe" loudness emergency brake, the install includes a Cesva LRF-05 processor and limiter which receives its sense input from a black box that provides isolation from audience noise and simultaneously records noise levels for logging purposes, a legal requirement in Switzerland.
Because ‘tis is open six nights a week, the install by M&R Multimedia Productions had to be meticulously planned and implemented. M&R project manager Christoph Ritter cited the limited time frame as the main challenge. The entire installation had to be accomplished within 48 hours.
"At 5am, when the Saturday Club Night ended, we started rocking. At 7am Sunday morning we began dismantling the old equipment. By mid-afternoon, all the loudspeakers and old amplifier racks were dismantled. Then we immediately started the installation of 18 new loudspeaker systems. By early Monday morning, despite a sleepless night, we had set up and rewired all the new amplifiers and system racks. That afternoon we began running tests and fine tuning," Ritter said.
WSDG, M&R and Audio Partner collaborated on the system calibration and measurement. "Despite the extremely tight schedule, we managed to play background music as early as noon on Tuesday and launch Friday Club Night with full power," said Alain Müller of M&R. The following weekend, ‘tis reopened with a big celebration.
For more information, please visit www.wsdg.com and www.martin-audio.com.
