Sky Kitchen

The Skykitchen

With a design between industrial aesthetic and upscale club atmosphere, the Skykitchen makes a leap over the rooftops of the Vienna club scene, including – of course – the beautiful view. However, what is a club without a proper sound concept? This question was rightly asked by the Skykitchen operators and we were asked to make suggestions.

Now that we have become known in the scene as the “Soundguys” and we have equipped locations like the Flex and the Sass, both in Vienna, or the Opernpassage in Graz, all of which are characterised by a high-quality sound that is not everyday in every respect, the Skykitchen was naturally a welcomed new challenge. In two elevators in the Skykitchen design, the audience is lifted up after passing through the foyer, slowly immersed in the bass sound of the club, which intensifies as the height increases and at the latest when the elevator door opens, the visitor knows that his expectations regarding a sophisticated club sound will be fulfilled.

The Concept

Through two entrances you can enter the club, which extends L-shaped with the dance floor at the intersection of the two levels. The pointed corner of the L-shaped club has already proved to be the ideal position for the 2D vertical bass array developed by pro performance during our first ascent. Four top units by Acoustic Line, arranged offset around corners, sound the dancefloor, four further nearfield systems sound the areas around the bars. The aim was to concentrate the sound on the dance floor, while communication should still be possible in the lounge and bar area. Eight high-quality amplifiers ensure sufficient power reserves, signal routing is entirely digital, from the CD players to the audio matrix, with which the signal distribution, the specific system control and its equalization, as well as the sensible limitation of the system takes place.

The principle of the 2D vertical bass array is also used, for example, in the Opera Passage in Graz, where, just like in the Skykitchen, the ceilings are rather low. Low rooms react somewhat sensitively to low frequencies, because these almost always, reflecting between floor and ceiling, lead to resonances in the upper bass range. It booms or whirrs, but mostly both. Even with modern methods of equalizing sound systems, it is difficult to remedy this situation, especially with regard to uniform and tonally balanced bass reproduction. This is because sound energy that is damped by an equalizer to eliminate resonances and boom frequencies is naturally also missing in the sound spectrum. 2D vertical bass array provides a convincing remedy here. Not only do we achieve an extremely dynamic, powerful and balanced bass reproduction, which is also distributed evenly throughout the room, but we can also set the crossover frequency to the tops of the system up to an octave higher than is usually reasonably possible. This increases the pressure in the fundamental range of the sound and the overall reproduction is significantly more homogeneous.

The Result

Magic? Not at all! Physics is the key word here. Our motto: Sucess through Know How! However, a replica is not recommended, since without comprehensive knowledge of various contexts this principle can very quickly lead to a disaster…