Salsa Cafe, Newcastle
This month’s featured install at DACs took a Latin American twist as we visited Newcastle’s finest café and tapas bar, ‘Salsa’.
Recent developments at Salsa, located on
Westgate road in the beating heart of the town's most recent area of
regeneration, have meant that the owners have endeavoured to expand their
capacity and offer an additional room for customers to hire for parties and
events or simply for overflow on busy nights.
With a small to medium sized room of
approximately eight by six meters the whole room's audio could be covered
adequately with only two speakers which were mounted on custom shelves at
ceiling height for best coverage at the furthermost end of the room.
One of the main areas of work at salsa was
the installation of three custom wall boxes which allowed for the accommodation
of a variety of flexible input options. The main box was installed in a Staff
only area and allowed the routing of audio from three separate sources to the
main room. With sources selectable from the use of a customer's i-Pod in the
room, an in house DJ or the music from the i-Tunes computer located in the
downstairs bar, there were plenty of options provided for. The second box was a wall mounted panel box in
the main room consisting of a mini jack input and stereo phono inputs with a
composite video connector to feed the projector. This meant that a DJ or i-Pod
could be located there and be routed to the main speakers, and DVDs and
computer presentations could be made with ease. The final box was a DACS custom
interface box containing two circuits acting as buffers, boosting the signal by
around 12dB from the pre-amplifier that the i-Tunes computer feeds to the
upstairs
Overall this system, although simple, is
one that allows the venue to have complete control over its audio via only one
strategically placed custom switching unit. This is not made possible by
expensive off the shelf products but by custom design, tailored specifically
for the clients needs. The resultant install is of such a nature that the venue
has an entirely boutique and unique system covering all their needs with no
costly extras they will never use.
Kneale Brown