Lambda Labs goes Stuttgart

If the Speakeasy wouldn’t have opened its doors in the year 2011 in Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Württemberg, but in the town Stuttgart in the state of Kansas USA in the 1930s, not only the name would have been program. No, but the way to get there might have only been found by a little group of insiders, who for fear of missing their beer wouldn’t have breathed a word about that place. And when you eventually sat in such a “Speakeasy” in times of the Prohibition (1920–1933), you had to play the game and speak low, very low, if you wanted to quench your thirst the next day, too.

The Speakeasy in the inner-city of Stuttgart has precious little to do with the epochs of the American history for now. The club located in the cellar of an office building blossomed out to a famous and well-known hip club in just one year, in which it precisely isn’t only about spirits but international artists and local newcomers, poetry slams and minor arts make a high-proof entertainment sure. Magazines choose this locality to be the must see of the town, and therefore more and more Swabian nighthawks find their way into the Speakeasy on the Rothebühlplatz, in which indeed nobody has to whistle anymore, however soft and eased tones where sorely missed.

“With the previous sound system we had, we were satisfied by no means”, says Michael Rieger, the Speakeasy’s club manager. “We often had complaints about the sound. Not just the guests and the artists were partially discontent, but also the bar personnel, who really had to suffer during the past circumstances. One bar is situated next to the stage, wherefore it rapidly became unpleasantly loud, distorted and we often had acoustic feedback problems with microphones because the PA was absolutely inapplicable for long rooms with low ceilings and ever reaching the other end of the main floor. However by changing the sound system we didn’t just want to get this mentioned problems solved, but set new acoustic standards in Stuttgart and its region”.

Actually the structural conditions in the Speakeasy are acoustically not easy. The majority of the interior consists of bare concrete, because the former subterranean garage was converted in to a club. The herby resulting framing look of the interior complies to the conception of the club, wherefore this look shouldn’t been modified by any acoustic measures. Therefore it was necessary to install a sound system which would bring out preferably little acoustic energy on the concrete surfaces, and reach an influenceable sound dispersion angle with a highest possible precision. The ideal application for the first installation of the “DKW – Line Source” in Germany.

The construction of the DKW – Line Source system doesn’t build on conventional line array systems, but applies a groundbreaking and newly developed principle. Thereby the advantages of line sources and horn loaded speakers are unified. Besides the very high efficiency, through this, a uniform horizontal coverage down to the low bass frequencies can be controlled.

Precisely in difficult acoustic conditions with narrow and long rooms, how they are in the Speakeasy, the controllable sound dispersion easily allows to get a maximum of the emitted sound energy past the acoustically hard walls. The sound intensity in single zones like bars by contrast, can be specifically reduced as required.

Six MF-15A in the stage broaden the low frequency range acting as line source from 80 Hz convincing with an equally far reaching and even bass reproduction down to 30 Hz.

“Yet at the official opening with the new sound system we all could convince ourselves of the backflip in many respects. At this evening we had even two live concerts and one DJ from Berlin. The mixer, the artists, the barkeepers. All were very satisfied,” said Michael Rieger. Our club artist said: “The first concert was that forceful, and with the eight men on the stage really loud, although I was easily able to talk with my neighbor. That impressed me much”.