CHN – Optimal Audio has stepped out in style at the Shanghai Metropolitan VIP Lounge, with an installation of Cuboid loudspeakers tuned into the discerning regular crowd – gentlemen who cut their teeth at the legendary Paramount and Metropolitan ballrooms in their younger years. Entertaining this calibre of style-focussed guests who can tell a waltz from a tango at the first bar requires audio quality that hits the right note.
The venue’s exacting brief called for low end that was firm and tuneful rather than booming, tempo that held through every waltz and slow waltz, conversation in the booths that could carry without shouting, even coverage under an octagonal dome prone to echo, and a finish discreet enough to sit alongside crystal chandeliers and original Shanghainese woodwork. Cue Optimal Audio Cuboid 10 and Cuboid 12 loudspeakers.
In the lounge area populated with seating booths, Cuboid 10 takes the lead. Its clean hand-off at the crossover provides warm and detailed mid-range, perfect for the old standards on the playlist and sitting comfortably under conversation rather than fighting it. The user-rotatable HF horn delivers 90-degrees of horizontal dispersion maintaining evenly lit sound, corner banquette to corner banquette.
The dancefloor benefits from Cuboid 12 enclosures where the 12-inch drivers – reaching down to 62Hz – deliver deep and solid tones whilst keeping the rhythm tight and defined. With headroom to spare, they’re never stretched and the sound holds its shape late into the evening.
The trapezoid wooden cabinets of the Optimal Audio Cuboid loudspeakers sit naturally with the venue’s heritage interior, whether wall-mounted, suspended, portrait or landscape. Flexible mounting and the rotatable HF horn mean coverage reaches the corners as confidently as the centre.
Another challenge met neatly by the characteristics of Optimal Audio Cuboids was the venue’s dominating ceiling dome. The unruly reverberance of the dome’s acoustics was tamed with the passive two-way design of the Optimal Audio Cuboid enclosures. The outcome was a sound system that ran reliably and distortion-free across long sessions, which matters in a venue where an evening’s dancing isn’t measured in songs but in hours.
Photos: Adam Firman/Lina Stores
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