The Arcus Café and Night Bar located in Čakovec, in northern Croatia, has been open since 1998 and serves a population of nearly 45,000. Recently, the club undertook an upgrade project under the direction of owner Ivan Steficar, who turned to Davor Files from ELTEL, the sales partner for d&b audiotechnik’s Croatian distributor, Sunflower.
“The Arcus Cafè is quite an intimate space,” says Files, “in total no more than 90 square meters. The performance space for the DJ is in the center of the room so we opted to incorporate the subs into the plinth itself. The choice there was for 18S-SUBs from the d&b xS-Series. Their compact construction doesn’t compromise their performance and makes them perfect for this sort of environment. The central location of the DJ station makes for a venue where everyone can feel close to the action.
“For the loudspeakers we knew the small but mighty E8s from the d&b E-Series would be perfect for the job,” Files continues. “They are a two-way multipurpose loudspeaker and the facility to rotate the horn through 90 degrees is always helpful when you are installing a system in a space like this. The club generally hosts DJ performances but live music acts also use the venue and so we wanted a system that could be flexible and versatile enough to accommodate this.”
Tomislav Koran from Sunflower was involved in the final design decisions. “Although this is quite a small space, the glass and gloss finishes and the rooms leading off make for, potentially, a fairly tricky design,” Koran says. “The owner, Mr. Steficar, came to watch us tune the system. The room was full of measurement microphones and wires, and we showed him how simply leaving a door open can dramatically effect the audio experience for his customers. It works like a big Helmholtz resonator and you could hear a significant difference in the sub frequencies when we opened or closed a door.
“We had 30 days until opening to install the system,” Koran continues, “which might seem like a fairly comfortable timeframe, but we were working around all the other refurbishment contractors, which can so often hold you up. So I was really happy that we managed to complete the installation on time.”
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