Long, Languid and Luscious - the d&b cocktail

Dark and cool, located in the basement of the Georges Building, Collins Street, Melbourne, the Long Room is a sophisticated refuelling stop for downtown business people before they venture home from work. Besides the long, very long, sandstone bar, think leather sofas, discrete curtained booths, and a great wine list; but think also of the music. "We've worked with the bar owners on several previous projects," said Adam Nevzat of LSD Productions, who designed and installed the audio system at the Long Room. "We've done six or seven other venues for them and now they always come to us."

The Long Room is very much an early evening lounge bar, not a dance club, but everything about it is the best and that includes the music. "They wanted their clientele to be able to hear the system," continued Nevzat, "and hear that it was good, not some irritating mosquito in the background. That was the challenge; it needed to be loud, but they needed to be able to talk comfortably over the top of it without shouting."

LSD Productions, like all prudent specialists in this sector, choose from a range of leading audio products to satisfy their customers, in this instance electing to use primarily Ci80 installation loudspeakers from German manufacturer d&b audiotechnik. "We've known about d&b's systems for some time; they've had a presence here in Australia for at least three years" continued Nevzat. "Their distributor here, National Audio Systems, had demo'd the Ci80s to us previously and I knew then that in the right application they're the perfect box; the Long Room is that application."

"This is a room for seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred people, with a ceiling height of 3.5 metres. Being a basement, all the walls are solid and everything is expensively upholstered so it's a pretty friendly audio environment. The broad eighty-five degree conical dispersion of the full range Ci80 is just ideal, though we've added a few d&b E12 loudspeakers to provide the bass extension. This installation was completed at the end of March and it sounds great. Our client is happy, and the customers love it. A month later and we're already working on our third d&b installation."