Toro Toro in Washington, D.C., a Pan-Latin Steakhouse upstairs and a New York-style ‘super lounge’ downstairs has installed a new high-end sound system with Fulcrum Acoustic M-Series, S-Series and P-Series loudspeakers.
The upstairs area serves Central and South American cuisine and after 10pm, the 450sqm ‘super lounge’ with dancefloor, features premium Latin spirits and music by renowned DJs.
“The Toro Toro team wanted a high-fidelity system that would set them apart from the competition, so they came to us,” explained Randy White, senior buyer for Pro Audio, Lighting, and D.J. at Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center. “I’ve used a lot of Fulcrum Acoustic speakers, and I knew they would be perfect for the room.”
White explains the room’s unusual acoustics: “It’s an underground, rectangular space with a nine to ten-foot ceiling and lots of hard surfaces. As soon as you reach the bottom of the stairs, you’re on the dancefloor, which wraps around a cage surrounding the stairwell. The DJ booth is on a raised stage, with a big light show behind that. Because of the room’s layout and the high sound-pressure levels required, we went with a distributed system, which has worked very well.”
To handle the main area, White placed two Fulcrum Acoustic M-Series dual 12in coaxial loudspeakers. The M-Series is a small, three-way coaxial system with 75° x 75° dispersion, designed to deliver a visceral impact at high SPLs. Its low-frequency transducer provides maximum mid-bass impact. To handle sub lows, three Fulcrum Acoustic TS215 dual-15in, direct-radiating subwoofers were installed into the front of the stage.
White chose a mixture of Fulcrum Acoustic S-Series and P-Series loudspeakers to fill the areas around the banquettes and the sides of the dancefloor. The S-Series is a three-way, dual, 8in coaxial loudspeaker with a wide 100° x 100° dispersion pattern, combined with a 1.7in titanium compression driver. The P-Series is a two-way system that employs a single 8in coaxial with 100° x 100° dispersion and a 1.7in tweeter. Fulcrum US212 dual 12in direct-radiating subwoofers were selected to support the S-Series and P-Series loudspeakers. Lab.gruppen power amplifiers, rack-mounted in an air-conditioned room, drive the system. The speakers are managed using Symetrix DSP.
“The Toro Toro system is capable of 145 to 148dB,” said White. “We actually had to roll the three TS215s subs back because when we were tuning them, the low frequencies were knocking bottles off the bar upstairs. On a night with a full house, the system runs on at 35% because it has so much headroom. Even better, the Fulcrum loudspeakers are so well focused that although the sound on the dancefloor runs around 130dB, you can still talk off the dancefloor.”
