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Following a successful installation at La Grande Boucherie in Midtown Manhattan last year, Bond Applied Technology LLC has again installed Martin Audio’s popular CDD speaker series in another top New York restaurant.

This time the action moved to the trendy TriBeCa district of Lower Manhattan, and a new boutique Mexican restaurant called Casa Carmen, which has been equipped with 10 ultra-compact CDD6 enclosures and four cleverly concealed SX110 subwoofers.

Collaborating once again with interior designer Julien Legeard (of Legeard Studio)—as at La Grande Boucherie—Bond director, Christopher Mayes-Wright, once again adopted the coaxial differential dispersion technology of Martin Audio’s tried and trusted CDD.

“My experience with CDD speakers has been nothing but amazing every time,” exclaimed Mayes-Wright. “I’ve been able to compare them in situ with other similar speakers and the clarity and accuracy of imaging and voicing is noticeably miles better.

“Some folks think this is irrelevant in an installation environment where there are so many factors affecting acoustic performance—asymmetrical rooms, a mixture of often highly reflective materials such as tiles and glass. But I believe that in these circumstances it’s even more important to have a perfectly tight and controlled sound coming from your loudspeakers, to avoid what I call the ‘shopping mall effect’, which you find in lots of spaces where the sound comes from above.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH CDD SPEAKERS HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT AMAZING EVERY TIME.

“What tends to happen is that the sound energy just floats around untamed in a vast layer above the heads of the customer, and sounds like never ending clatter. The clarity of CDDs is one giant leap towards avoiding that scenario.”

The restaurant itself represents the first US opening by a family of restaurateurs from Mexico City. The name ‘Carmen’ is a homage to the family matriarch and celebrated Mexican cook, Carmen ‘Titita’ Ramirez Degollado, and it is being run by her grandsons, Santiago and Sebastian Ramirez Degollado. Following the pandemic, TriBeCa is currently going through a resurgence.

The sound system is very efficient, but still very powerful. “ I’m a big fan of running a powerful system at below 35% of its potential,” continues Mayes-Wright. “This keeps distortion to an absolute minimum and also extends the life of the equipment.”

The brief had been clear—the system needed to sound good and fill the room, but at the same time allow regular conversation to take place. “The room acoustics help with this,” notes the installer. “There’s a layer of absorption on the ceiling and the natural wood and stucco surfaces help with diffusion of high frequencies.

“They also wanted to hide the speakers wherever possible; I always like this approach, so we were on the same wavelength from the start.” Sound feed is playback from a multi-zone Sonos system.

As to speaker concealment this not only benefitted the design aesthetic but was in keeping with the installer’s general ethos. I’m all about hiding speakers. They are designed to be heard, so why slap them on the wall where they mess with a designer’s lines, if you can move them somewhere out of sight and still achieve the same effect?” he rationalises.

This in particular applied to the SX110s which are enclosed in the cabinetry by the bar and inside the walls in the dining area—in all cases, isolated with ¾” rubber sheeting to prevent acoustic transmission. “We worked with the designer to choose appropriate vents and trim pieces, and this proved extremely successful,” stated the Bond director.

Correct speaker mounting of the full-range CDDs—in this instance on the ceiling, 16ft off the floor, using custom Unistrut frames—was also critical to achieving even dispersion. Clever preparation enabled them to be positioned perfectly between the beams.

“With speakers so high, pointing downwards, you often lose clarity and run into standing waves between the floor and ceiling. The CDDs’ tight phase response between drivers—they’re phase aligned due to the driver design—helped enormously with this.”

Despite the presence of a third-party processor, the CDDs were able to be run pretty much straight out of the box. “I didn’t do much more than enter the manufacturer-recommended EQ settings for the CDD6s, cross over the subs and do some overall tweaks after a walk-through the space with diners present.”

And Christopher Mayes-Wright’s final verdict? “The clients are super happy,” he confirms. “I went to dinner with friends at Casa Carmen shortly after it opened and experienced the sound on a busy night. The fact that everyone said how clear and controlled the sound was really made my day!”

Advanced Audio and Lighting recently completed a technical redesign of the Third Reformed Church in the city of Pella, Iowa, opting for a Martin Audio line array solution.

The integrators were re-engaged, having successfully carried out an earlier sound and lighting installation for the client. Explaining the necessity for the upgrade at the Pella facility, the company’s president (and senior design engineer) Graeme Brown, said, “As so often happens, the existing system was a case of fine products having been installed, but completely misapplied within the environment, so that coverage was extremely inconsistent.”

He noted that the building’s unusual geometric had provided challenges in this regard. “The space is quite unique—a modified fan-shaped building with lots of ceiling angles and a massive custom centre truss that required outfills and delayed loudspeakers to evenly cover all seating.”

The new PA would not only need to address these issues but also have the capability of reinforcing a variety of events and source inputs. “While the Church’s main focus is contemporary music, it does have a choir and mixed quartets on a regular basis for the early service.

“The client was requesting very hi-fidelity, with extended sub-bass, rather than necessarily high SPL.” His solution was to designate a main PA comprising the scalable resolution of the Wavefront Precision WPS compact line array, which features 2 x 8” LF drivers, 4 x 4” midrange drivers and 4 x 1” exit HF compression horns. Wavefront Precision was recently accoladed with the Queen’s Award for Innovation.

To this he added centre flown SXC118 cardioid low frequency enclosures, as well as a further SXH218 subwoofers on the floor for added sub-bass.Additional fills were provided by Martin Audio’s CDD series.

“The Wavefront system and SXC118, in conjunction with the DISPLAY 2 software and iKON DSP amplifiers, driving the system in 1-box resolution, provided optimum efficiency. “It gave us the best control over which areas of the sanctuary needed coverage and which needed avoided. Once properly configured—during the design phase—commissioning becomes greatly simplified; since the system handles the loudspeaker management on its own, the integrator can focus on aligning and tuning the room … and not ‘fixing’ the sound system.”

To achieve this optimisation had required a good deal of clever programming in the Martin Audio software, in particular using the ‘Hard Avoid’ function, stated the installer. “There was initially some acoustic treatment in the space, more absorption was added during this phase.

“With that and the multiple ceiling angles adding diffusion, the space is very well behaved, and the system performs extremely well in those conditions. It has much more gain before feedback, when compared with the previous system.”

The new Martin Audio system also meets all the requirements for weight loading and general aesthetics. “The original system was the typical ‘flying junkyard’, so popular at the time. It consisted entirely of front-loaded, point source powered enclosures, whereas the new system is based on line array technology and cardioid low frequency control.

“Between the Martin Audio factory rigging hardware and the custom Polar Focus beam mounts, this was an extremely clean installation. Everything is high and tight. The clients were thrilled even before it was powered up.”

The result is that the 800-cap congregation in the main sanctuary now receives the exact same signal wherever they are seated, and when the doors open out to engage a further 100-seat overflow, whenever capacity is reached, these worshippers too will be immersed in an identical audio experience.

Advanced Audio’s designer believes the clients are now able to achieve their goals of communication on a much higher level, while no longer battling sound system shortcomings. This is supported by a church spokesman.

“The Martin WPS system that Graeme and his team installed has met and exceeded our expectations, since our room design is not your typical space for modern live sound. The WPS arrays perform very well in our space and have taken our musical mixes to a much higher level while also improving speech intelligibility.

“The steerability and thoughtful design of this PA allowed us to create intentional ‘PA Silent’ areas on the sides of our room. This allows us to better serve our congregation with prayer and communion ministries during our worship services.

“From the tightness of the low end to the clarity and smoothness of the high end, we are extremely pleased with this system design and performance.”