Beer & Bird, a newly opened bar restaurant in St. Ives, Cornwall, has been kitted out with a Yamaha Commercial Installation Solutions (CIS) system for its background music and to bring a ‘subtly rendered sonic palette’.
Beer & Bird is an independent, family run business, which grew out of John’s Wines and Spirit Specialists – a long-established Cornish retailer of high quality wines, spirits, beers and ciders. The new restaurant opened its doors in April and features the company’s drinks with locally-sourced food.
Proprietors Tom, Sam and Paul Hanson were determined that the quality of the ambience should match the quality of its fare, so they approached Penzance-based Acoustic Streams.
“We are used to selling very high-end residential systems, so when they approached us with the brief that they wanted ‘something special’ for Beer & Bird’s background music system, we knew that we could fulfil the brief. It was just down to choosing the best solution,” said Acoustic Streams’ Kenny Thompson.
Yamaha Commercial Audio’s John Perry demonstrated how a CIS system would deliver the required quality, flexibility and be straightforward to install and set up. “As soon as we saw what the CIS range was capable of, we knew it was the right solution,” said Thompson.
The system comprises an MTX3 matrix processor and an XMV4280 power amplifier, with two VXS8 and two VXS5 surface-mount speakers, plus four VXC6 and two VXC4 ceiling speakers. The system is controlled by a DCP4V4S surface-mount unit in each of four zones – which cover the bar, restaurant, lounge and entrance areas – plus Yamaha’s Wireless DCP app on IOS.
“The background music is largely blues and jazz and they wanted the system to function slightly differently in each area,” explains Thompson. “It’s an open plan space, but the quality of the Yamaha loudspeakers means that the restaurant has music at a low level, whereas in the bar the level is louder but it doesn’t intrude. In the lounge the focus was very much on the quality of reproduction.
“We found the CIS range brilliant to work with and lovely to install. The design is really well thought out from the installer’s perspective, the system is easily configurable and we really like the fact that the DCP4V4S and Wireless DCP make it so straightforward to control. We’ve been very happy with how it has all worked out.”
