Moscow’s latest zeitgeist-surfing venue, Paradize, is an opulent banqueting complex with three separate dining areas all targeted directly at event-based dining and driven by a d&b audiotechnik soundsystem.
“This is not a restaurant for a quiet night out with your girlfriend,” said Alexander Kalish of Svetogor, the company charged with enhancing the atmosphere of the venue. “A party of twenty or thirty people is normal.”
Paradize provides a decidedly deluxe setting for its well-heeled clientele. “We are a specialist in lighting and environment,” explained Kalish. “The director of Paradize, Nikolay Bredov, wanted something of the old style regal glamour of the 19th Century, mixed with modern high quality technology. But on no account was the technology to be intrusive, it had to flatter the Rococo décor, not disturb it.”
Of the three, the Large Banquet Hall is the most impressive, “It even has a modest performance stage, as befits such grandiose dining,” said Kalish. “Naturally this meant that a modern state of the art PA system would be required and we turned immediately to our friends at Aris Pro, a company we find to be experts in this field.”
Aris Pro’s Evgeny Shuev designed the sound system installation. “We selected d&b’s excellent T-Series loudspeakers, small and powerful, they would have the lowest visible impact while providing ideal coverage of the entire dining area. These are great loudspeakers, for me the only choice in this application; the transparency of their live reproduction is truly astonishing to hear.
“Attaining the proper low end was not quite so simple. By definition low-end loudspeakers tend to be large because of the need to control very long wavelengths. But the d&b catalogue has a solution to every problem and because the sonic performance of every loudspeaker in all their different Series, adhere to that same stern discipline of total transparency, it is not a concern to mix and match.”
Shuev installed, under the supervision of Svetogor, T10s flown in clusters each side of the stage, with Q-SUBs built into custom niches within the stage frontage all driven by D12 amplifiers. “With the subwoofers almost totally concealed it only remained for d&b to match the RAL colour of the prevailing décor to the T cabinets flown above and the job was complete.”
Paradize director, Bredov, is impressed: “Such beautiful music: Aris Pro has done a fantastic job. They have been sensitive to the architecture and the T-Series from d&b has proved to be perfect for us; it looks great and sounds amazing. You could imagine you are standing in the middle of the musicians: so natural. I get hungry just thinking about it.”
