Installations

Mermaids swim with 200 silver schooling fish in The Coral Room's 9,000-gallon saltwater fish tank Looking into the coral pink living room from the main bar New York club veteran, Lee Fergusson of Showcall Resources, shown with one of four M2X Version 2 loudspeakers Photos courtesy of Mike Malice/Sonic Dog

The Coral Room
- Location: New York City, New York USA
- Speakers used: M2X Version 2

MacPherson Swims with Big Fish at New York's Coral Room

Louis R. Carlozo writes about MacPherson and this hot new club in Systems Contractor News, September 2003.

New York's Coral Room, opened in June, is already making waves in the Big Apple media; both the New York Post and New York Times have covered this amazing club—the centerpiece of which is a 9,000-gallon saltwater fish tank positioned behind the bar. In a twist on the '60s go-go girl theme, a female swimmer dives in every half hour with the tank's 200 silver schooling fish.

But getting the club to look—and sound—as good as it does posed a high-order challenge. Owners Paul Devitt and Chris Ventura started from scratch, renovating a single story, 5,000-sq. ft. warehouse. For visuals, they planned not just the tank, but walls with glittered coral cast in concrete. And for equally arresting sound, they turned to Lee Fergusson of Showcall Resources. Fergusson, a New York club veteran for the last 11 years, employed MacPherson's M2X speakers to meet both the rigorous demands for the project's sound and budget. (Total equipment costs had to be kept below $35,000.)

"It has been my favorite speaker for a long time," said Fergusson, who used four M2Xs on the main dance floor. "You’re always looking for a building block in the corporate sound world and this speaker outperforms speakers with similar components. The high frequency is extremely musical and very flattering to the voice. It really requires no additional EQ; if you turn it on and do as instructed with the crossover, it sounds gorgeous."

Working with help from Mike Terpstra, a Broadway sound engineer, Fergusson designed a system that employs QSC PL236 power amps on the M2Xs, pushing 1,100 watts into 4 ohms per side. Smoothing out the sound before it hits the MacPhersons (and the dancers) are Ashley 31-band EQs and Symmetrix 501 RMS compressor/limiters.

All that gear adds up to a maximum dance floor volume of 105dB on the dance floor—which a zealous deejay in the heat of a set can't override because Fergusson has built a system that is essentially tamper proof. That kind of pump and thump might make similar speakers wilt or give up their tonal character, but not the M2Xs, Fergusson says.

"In the PA world, there are a lot of speakers that, with background noise, you have to push the speaker to its limits—and that's the test," he notes. "Inferior speakers will sound woofy on the low end, brittle on the high end, and if microphones are involved, generally honky—whereas the M2X, at high [volume] levels, none of the components or the tuning of the box are letting you down. It still sounds musical."

Nor did any of this require days of tinkering on Fergusson's part. "The beautiful thing about the M2X is that it sounds fabulous straight out of the box with the simplest analog crossover at 1K," he says.

"The best thing about the M2X version 2 is the superb audio quality," says T.C. Furlong of T.C. Furlong, Inc., a Lake Forest, IL company that has advised Fergusson on the Coral Room and other projects. "It's a good choice when high output and high fidelity in a small package are needed. The high output and compact size were a perfect fit."

Installation was equally easy, though the club's construction posed some challenges. The speakers were flown from roof joists using aircraft cable; afterwards, a drop ceiling was installed covering the joists.

Devitt says that he's "very happy" with the system Fergusson has built and the performance of the MacPherson components. The proof lies in the club's future plans; Fergusson is looking to buy two more M2Xs to do live sound for performing bands.

"For years, the M2X has been a favorite of sound engineers for mixing live music in small- and medium-sized venues," Furlong said. "The Coral Room should be a great venue for live music and the M2X will do its part to make sure the artists sound their best."

Fergusson need not be sold on that point. His first exposure to MacPherson products came at New York's Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in 1998. "I discovered the M2X, going back through the LPX—a floor monitor with similar components," he recalls. "It was the most powerful stage monitor I had come across and also the most musical. So for a private party I rented the M2Xs on the strength of the sound of the monitor—and I had a nine-piece band with a brass section and four vocalists. Just a pair of those speakers—one a side—in a garden, and I was very impressed."

Coral Room co-owner Ventura, it would seem, is just as pleased with MacPherson—though he could not be reached for this article because, as a his voice mail message points out, he dropped his cell phone in the tank.