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A Friend's resturant wants music and asking me for help... (1 Viewer)

Grady Hollums

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D.G. Hollums
So what would you suggest for equipment to give this guy sound in his restaurant. I will be doing all the installation and suggesting in purchasing the equipment and speakers. I asked them for a dollar amount and they asked if I could give them a low end price, mid-end, and high-end pricing for the set up.

They need 4 speakers in the back room and two speakers in the front room. They would like to have a cd player and receiver for radio. The speakers need to be smaller so I can install them in the top part of the walls. So what would be your suggestions.... Remember this is not for theater and just for back ground music while people eat. No TVs anywhere.

Thanks for the suggestions and I look forward to see what yall come up with...

(Maybe a cheap Denon with 6.1 stereo, or would you get a separate amp for the speakers and a basic receiver and CD changer? Just a few things that have been bouncing around my head.
 

Brian OK

Supporting Actor
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Main thing to NOT forget is ... ASCAP and BMI. You don't pay the fees they come with lawyers. You can't play music in this type of environment without paying the players.
As far as what gear.... just depends on budget.

Others will surely offer recommendations. I'm just telling you how to avoid the surprises when your friend opens the doors with "free" music for his patrons.
Also, commercial gear is much different than consumer gear. Multiple speakers on a string must be rated accordingly. Amps need to be beefy. If you string speakers then the last one on the string is a 2 ohms load.... ie starving. The stuff you see in environments like this with many, many speakers is commercial equipment. Much different than consumer grade stuff found on this forum.

Good Luck.
 

Dean_S

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I did an art gallery about 10 years ago and it worked out well. To really help we would need to know the dimensions of each room, ceiling height, and surfaces (hard floors, hard walls, drop ceiling, etc...) I don't recommend a HT recv for this...just find a 2-ch and run impedance matching volume controls for each pair (you will need them anyway).
 

SethH

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Check out the B&W WM6. It has the Nautilus series tweeter. It should be a great speaker for you. It runs about $250/speaker.
 

Grady Hollums

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D.G. Hollums
Bryan:

Do they need asacp and bmi if they are only going to have a radio or satellite Radio going in the back ground? They are not going to print up any of the lyrics and they are not going to have any live bands. Is this true for CD's being played in restaurants and stores? what about radio? or satellite Radio?

Everyone:

Where do I get separates for stereo power and a preamp or would the pre-amp be the radio receiver/CD player and then the amps are the amps and you just put the signal from the radio receiver and CD player into the amps?

The room space is really not that big at all. The owners here are running a Ma and Pa restaurant and are tired of the jambox on a fire place mantle for the radio music only in the back room and just want something a little nicer looking that will give sound in the restaurant...they just started serving food in the evenings, so they are trying to make it a little nicer for the evening crowds. I really don't think they are wanting a top notch deal that would require room demintions for perfect sound. They just want 4 speakers in the back room because it is larger and tow in the front room where it is much smaller and nothing in the front part of the restaurant that has the typical 50's bar counter top with a huge open window to the kitchen. Think the typical dinner you see in the movies except a small room to the side of the bar counter (holds 7 tables that seat 4 each) and a back room that is triple the size of the front side room, but no 50's bar top of a dinner table. (sorry that I can not get room dimensions right now)

I think the $250 per speaker is a little much, but I can ask them. You got to think of a grease pit burger place except change the food to mexican and add a great rep for the restaurant and you got this place.

The manager/co-owner is a typical business man and wants, "the cheapest possible as long as it gets the job done" type of attitude, the other co-owner/Bank Manager wants to get the job done, but it does not have to be the worst stuff made.

with this info, any suggestions and also any web links so I can get more info? Maybe even a link to a place that sells what you are talking about.


Thanks for all the help already!!! I love this forum more and more each time I post. This forum is better than any book I have ever seen on any shelf. :D Thanks for your help!!!
 

SethH

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Ah, from the first post I was assuming (for some reason) that it was a nice, sit-down restaurant. Yeah, the B&W's would be overkill for a burger joint.
 

Dean_S

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Grady,

You mentioned in-wall, so I'll recommend Cambridge SoundWorks (http://www.cambridgesoundworks.com/s...ory=spk_inwall). They have the 52s for $129 pr and they don't sound bad at all. B-stock are $99 pr and I think I've seen the 62 series on Ubid for $89 pr.

Here's what I recommend:
3 pr Cambridge 52 in-walls (a-stock) = approx $390

1 Harman Kardon HK3380 Stereo recv Retail is $299 (probably easy to find for less).

3 Impedance matching volume controls. Prices range from $30/ea to $100/ea. I like Niles brnad because I know it's reliable. Take a look at smarthome.com for a decent selection of these.

IN-wall speaker wire: Many choices, don't know how much you need. look at http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=100-722 (this is a 100ft roll of 16ga in-wall for $9.70. Partsexpress also sells volume controls.

After that just pick a multi-cd changer and other add on components for the music.

Total cost would be under $800 for everything except the CD changer and it would sound good and be reliable.
 

Bill Will

Screenwriter
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Dec 26, 2001
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1,282
As for ASCAP & BMI, your suposed to pay them if your playing ANY Copyrighted Material to the public. Believe it or not, you can't even sing "Happy Birthday" in a resturant without paying them ;)
 

Andy F

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Sep 10, 2001
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I agree with Dean_S. you could also get a speaker selector with volume control built into it so you don't have to cut holes for the niles volume controls
 

Brian OK

Supporting Actor
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Aug 29, 2000
Messages
550
Bill Will is correct. The copyright laws require that any retail establishment "for profit" must pay the license fees to the artists for material played in said establishment. It could be a boombox with bloated bass in a backroom.
It is a VERY strong union and they have never lost a court case. Pay the artists ASCAP and BMI fees. It is only fair and is simply the cost of doing business. It is not a large sum and not worth trying to circumvent.

Hell, in a past lifetime when I used to hawk commercial sound systems I many times dropped a dime on the joints which didn't buy into my offerings and opted to play their home-rigged systems without paying the appropriate fees.

Trust me, the license issuance for a "new joint" in town is logged and read by many eyes and never overlooked by the union collectors.
Just do the right thing and pay the players.
 

Wayne A. Pflughaupt

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As a former pro/commercial installer, I can tell you that the way this is usually done is with a so-called 70-volt system. It doesn’t require impedance matching or separate volume controls – which quite frankly is silly if they are all in the same room anyway.

The amplifier puts out a 70-volt signal, and transformers at each speaker are tapped at the wattage you want it to have – usually ranging from 0.5 to 10 watts. For instance, if all 6 speakers were tapped at 10 watts it would only require a 60-watt amp. In your friend’s situation, they might want to tap the four speakers in the big section at 10 watts, and the two in the small section at 5 watts or less. This eliminates the need for separate volume controls

TOA Electronics makes the industry-standard products for this application. Check out their 900 and 500 series mixer/amps.
http://www.toaelectronics.com/amp0000.asp

If you really want to do it on the cheap, it’s not hard to find used TOA gear on eBay. Any local commercial sound installation or electronics hobbyist outlet should be able to supply the transformers.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
 

Dean_S

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The reason you want seperate volume controls is not because it's the only way to impedance match, but for your customers. Sometimes a diner will complain it's too loud, so with the volume controls you can turn down just the pair in that area and leave the rest as is. It allows "fine tuning", it's a small cost, and it's easy for an amateur installer to wire.
 

Wayne A. Pflughaupt

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That brings up something I forgot to mention: You don’t want to do something like this in stereo. Stereo is only for home listening where there is a designated sweet spot, and the seating is arranged accordingly. In a commercial background music environment, very few listeners will ever be in the necessary sweet spot. It’s more important for anyone who’s paying attention to the music to hear everything on the recording and not be lacking say, a key guitar part because they’re sitting in the wrong place.

Regards,
Wayne
 

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