An expanding chain of upmarket karaoke bars owes a large part of its success to the pristine audio it can offer to groups of up to 15 people hiring its private rooms.
Set up by Martha Lane Fox, founder of lastminute.com, Lucky Voice has now opened its fifth unit in Brighton, with a technological infrastructure evolved from the original design by integration company Green-I (now part of the SSE Audio Group). The audio control draws heavily on BSS Soundweb London BLU-16 DSPs to handle the delicate mic mixing.
Green-I’s experienced Ian Woodall has been a long-time advocate of BSS digital signal processing — from the early ‘Green’ boxes (which were specified at the first Lucky Voice operations) through the more sophisticated CobraNet-compatible London BLU’s, which offer reconfigurable I/O’s.
Here Green-I have assigned four independent BLU-16’s to drive the seven karaoke rooms. “Soundweb London looks after the user interface, the volume controls for the wireless mics and reverb effects,” he confirms. Mic mixing (of both wireless and wired) inputs are carried out via Soundweb’s automatic levelling to avoid any feedback, while all the ‘intelligence’ in each pod is created using the system’s Logic programming.
“The challenge was to get all the mic frequencies operable within an intimate space,” he said.
Green-I supplied all the touch screens, microphones, loudspeakers and amplification. They also originally introduced IT specialists IdeasAnvil, who in addition to providing IT support for the company, carry out online system monitoring and provide system alerts.
Their managing director, Mark Scott, said his company also specified the PCs and video output hardware, servers, network equipment and monitoring equipment. The karaoke system runs Lucky Voice’s bespoke software, sending MP3 and CDG files, while background music is provided from a C-Burn Revolution music server.
David Hampshaw, Lucky Voice’s Operations Manager, says that the new model for their karaoke bars sees a small reduction of the number of private rooms from nine to seven — allowing larger spaces — and a larger central bar area. “Our rooms are booked in two hour increments, but karaoke is an addictive experience, and they often get rebooked.” All rooms are served by drinks waitresses.
He said he is delighted by the quality and durability of the specified technology. “We are trading from 3pm to 2am seven days a week so we needed durable equipment, and the site has been problem-free, with no crashes.” With both a main and back up server redundancy is built into the system to minimise downtime.
Situated in a converted tea warehouse in Brighton’s famous Lanes this looks like the latest in a string of successes for Lucky Voice. “We’re extremely pleased with our latest Lucky Voice, we can’t wait to get Brighton singing.”
