The Client

With its large footprint, and impressive views from the fifth-floor balconies overlooking both Regent Street and Argyll Street in London’s West End, Aqua Restaurant Group has refurbished its Spanish restaurant, Aqua Nueva, into a contemporary dining room, contracting Sound Division on all audio requirements, and cementing its relationship with the company.

The project saw Aqua working again with WFC, who were responsible for the fit-out, and Robert Angell Design International, who have re-focused the space to unveil a beautiful open restaurant – with intricate black and white mosaic floors evoking a traditional Spanish dining room, and framed by a copper-coloured vaulted ceiling, designed to imitate the inside of the renowned sherry casks of Jerez.

Sound Division first worked on the site several years ago, having been introduced by Jim Wood from 8track Music Solutions to carry out a progressive series of upgrades. This included first installing a high specification DJ booth, and later providing Electro-Voice loudspeakers for the venue’s two terrace rooftop bars — one overlooking Regent Street, the other Argyll Street.

Project Brief

Having been very satisfied with the work at Aqua London on Argyll Street, Aqua Restaurant Group Operations Director, Tony Geary then commissioned Sound Division to undertake complete new sound fit-outs at the Group’s two prestigious new restaurants, Aqua Shard and Hutong in The Shard.

States Sound Division MD David Graham, “We were then asked to reconfigure the existing sound system at Aqua London, replacing the antiquated analogue control. This required careful planning and a seven-zone system design, as we needed to retrofit new Martin Audio ceiling speakers unobtrusively into the design, using custom paint finish.”

System Solution

Sound Division specified C6.8T and C8.1T ceiling speakers, along with a state-of-the-art BSS Soundweb London digital DSP to handle all the routing. The company also diligently serviced and redeployed existing Crown amplifiers for elements of the system that need to be driven low-impedance, and fitted Cloud VTX4120 4-channel 100V line amps for the distributed transformer driven speakers.

With regard to Soundweb, two fixed format BLU-100 DSPs (each with 12 inputs/8 outputs) were deployed – one in each of the rack rooms for Aqua Nueva and Aqua Kyoto – both networked via Cat 5, using 24-port Netgear Gigabit switch.

Local control has been provided for bar staff in the form of BLU-10 touch screen remotes, while BLU-3 volume remotes can be found on each of the terraces and at the main entrance foyer. Control is also offered in the two private dining rooms within Aqua Nueva, which can be merged into one with the removal of the partition.

“The key element was to give the venue flexibility,” says David Graham. “To that end we have provided a DJ plug-in point in each of the restaurants, and two at the bar. In this way, we have future-proofed the venue while preserving the design aesthetic.”

The Result

Chris Martin, General Manager of Aqua London, is pleased with the solution. “The discreet ceiling speaker in the restaurant perfectly meets our requirements for background music without intruding on the design aesthetic, while the intelligent reworking of the existing sound system ensures that we have a more powerful option for private events, and on DJ nights.”