The Client

Overlooking the Piccadilly Basin in Manchester, Ducie Street Warehouse is a multipurpose space housed in a renovated railway goods warehouse behind Manchester’s Piccadilly station. Under the ownership of Native, owners of Aparthotel, Ducie Street Warehouse is home to a restaurant, bar, a drop-in workspace and winebar/coffee counter plus flexible events spaces with outdoor terraces and a private cinema. It is also adjacent to the boutique fitness studio, BLOK gym.

Open for drinks, lunch and dinner every day, Ducie Street Warehouse is the perfect place to hang out, meet friends, watch a film and hear good music, or listen to a talk, take a class, engage in considered discussion and debate, get some work done. There’s room for everyone to follow their own path; engage or unwind, socialise, graze, dine and drink. A large central bar dominates in the heart of the room, made of stainless steel and recycled brick, celebrating the innovation of Northern Industry. Muted colours and industrial surfaces set the tone. During the working week this space offers informal food & drink with endless co-working spaces to work, meet and socialise. In the evenings it flips into a place for gratifying liquid refreshment and socialising.

Project Brief

Having been given a recommendation by the owners of East London’s fashionable Bistrotheque restaurant in Bethnal Green, we were asked to provide a multi-zone, premium grade background music system with distributed, high-quality audio to provide optimum listening in each of the separate and adjoining audio zones. We were also asked to provide an option for visiting presenters, bands and DJs to plug-in to the installed system from a number of locations within the space.

System Solution

Ducie Street Warehouse is a large, open space with open ceiling architecture, divided into multiple audio zones to include the restaurant, lounge, lounge bar, coffee shop, plant shop, library and multiple PDR zones. We opted for a versatile multi-zone audio system based on Vue Audiotechnik’s premium i-Class installation loudspeakers with Crown amplification and BSS networking and control.

The main restaurant dining area features eight VUE Audiotechnik i-6T compact loudspeakers supplemented by two VUE Audiotechnik is-12 subwoofers for rich, detailed sound throughout the audio spectrum. A further twelve i-6T compact loudspeakers and four subs serve the main lounge/drop-in workspace area.

Moving into the bar and second lounge area, the requirement was for a system capable of delivering higher SPL when required, so we opted for twelve high power VUE Audiotechnik i-8T compact loudspeakers supported by four VUE is-12 subwoofers for low-end reinforcement. Four i-8T compact loudspeakers and two is-12 subwoofers are installed in the library.

For the coffee/wine bar – renamed Counter – and plant shop which just required low level background music, we installed VUE’s ultra-compact i-4.5t loudspeakers.

All loudspeakers are strategically flown from the open ceiling and positioned to provide clear, high-quality audio. The supporting sub-bass speakers for additional low-end frequency response, are installed discreetly, almost out of sight in each zone.

Audio for the loudspeakers is routed into each zone – nine in total – via a BSS BLU100 digital networked audio processor. This delivers selected audio signals for each zone to twenty high-quality amplifier channels, providing a total of up to 14kW of sound to the VUE Audiotechnik loudspeakers, from five Martin Audio MA2.8Q multi-channel amplifiers. An additional three Martin Audio MA3.0 amplifiers provide more than 9kW of sound to the supporting sub-bass speakers.

Multiple remote control points in the library and PDRs allow staff and management the ability to control volume levels and change audio source selection for the system as required in each zone.

A bespoke iPad control interface, with an intuitive GUI, allows management/staff convenient individual controls for the coffee bar, lounge, front bar, rear bar and plant shop directly from a single, portable device. Control of the restaurant, library, and PDRs 1, 2, and 3 are accessed from two further screens.

A total of seven music/microphone input points positioned in the restaurant, bar, lounge, library and PDRs allow localised connection to the installed audio system for live presentations, events and DJ system hook-ups.

Last Words

“It was a pleasure to be involved in a project of this scale for the team at the Ducie Street Warehouse. The expansive, open nature of the building presented some interesting acoustic challenges; speaker placement was very important to minimise reflections and ensure that each zone was filled with clear, detailed audio rather than ‘audio soup’ which is often the case in these cavernous spaces. We also needed to ensure that each zone had enough loudspeakers to adequately cover the area with no hot spots or dead zones. The combination of VUE Audiotechnik loudspeakers with BSS networking and control enabled us to deploy a comprehensive, multi-zoned sound system capable of high and low level SPLs, that is easy to control and flexible enough to cater for all occasions in this delightful space.” — David Graham, Sound Division.

• Clients: Go Native & Aparthotel
• Architects: Archer Humphryes
• Interior Design: Loren Daye, Love Is Enough
• Main Contractor : Styles & Woods
• M&E: TNA
• Cinema Installation: Sound Associates