Quick view:
- Rocco’s Tacos requires a hybrid restaurant-bar system that ramps up from comfortable daytime background music to high-output, bass-heavy sound during late-night hours.
- Sound Insight used SoundTube pendant speakers and subwoofers to deliver full-range output and broad coverage without compromising the dining experience.
- The two Rocco’s Tacos installations demonstrate the value of establishing a proven audio strategy and then adapting it to the individual environment.
Audio performance is particularly important for Rocco's Tacos, which transitions from energetic music during lunch and dinner to a system that can “pump and thump” during happy hour and late evenings. Sound Insight began working with Rocco’s Tacos at its Huntington Station, NY, location, and ultimately led to a SoundTube system becoming the blueprint for a second restaurant in Burlington, MA.
When Rocco’s Tacos leased its Huntington Station space, the former restaurant’s loudspeakers were already installed. Sound Insight, led by president Fred Kaplan, was brought in to complete the AV system and quickly discovered that the existing audio installation needed attention: The pendant loudspeakers were mounted at improper heights and spacing for the room, the existing system did not provide adequate coverage, and several subwoofers had failed.
Rather than discarding equipment that could still perform, Sound Insight worked with SoundTube technical support and engineering to evaluate the existing system, reposition and optimize the loudspeakers, replace or supplement equipment where necessary, and build a system capable of delivering the experience the new restaurant required.
The performance requirements at Rocco’s Tacos is what Kaplan described as a hybrid between a restaurant and a bar, making loudspeaker coverage, output and subwoofer performance particularly important. During lunch and dinner, the system needs to provide music throughout the restaurant at levels noticeably above conventional background audio while maintaining a comfortable dining environment. As the restaurant transitions into happy hour and late evening, the audio system becomes a much more prominent part of the experience, requiring substantially greater output and low-frequency impact.
That combination of requirements made SoundTube’s pendant loudspeakers and distributed subwoofers well suited to the application. The system could deliver broad, consistent coverage during dining periods while providing the headroom and low-frequency performance needed as the atmosphere became more energetic in the evening hours.
Unlike the New York restaurant, where Sound Insight began with an existing installation, the Burlington location provided an opportunity to design the audio system essentially from the ground up. The architecture also presented different conditions. Ceiling heights varied significantly from those in New York, and the restaurant included distinctive architectural elements such as a suspended bamboo drop ceiling and an open solarium with a solid wood ceiling.
Sound Insight turned to SoundTube’s design team to model the space before installation. Sound and heat mapping helped establish loudspeaker quantities, locations, mounting heights and predicted coverage. While some speaker positions ultimately required minor field adjustments to accommodate architectural elements, the fundamental loudspeaker count and system design remained consistent with the predictive model.
“Our goal is to remove uncertainty from system design,” said Sarah Chauvin, CTS, director of sales engineering and training for SoundTube. “Using SoundTube’s predictive modeling tools, we can show integrators exactly how a system is expected to perform before the first speaker is installed. For projects like Rocco’s Tacos, that means confident design decisions, even coverage throughout the space, and a smoother commissioning process that delivers the performance we designed from the very beginning.”
Sound Insight found a way to incorporate SoundTube's RS600i Series pendant loudspeakers into the suspended bamboo ceiling while maintaining the appearance of a built-in system. The pendant form factor provided the mounting flexibility necessary to suspend the loudspeakers from the structural deck above while positioning them at the heights established through the system design.
The Burlington installation included 26 SoundTube RS600i Series pendant loudspeakers supported by 10 RS1001i-II-T subwoofers. Ten CM82-BGM-II loudspeakers and two CM1001d-T subwoofers provided additional coverage in other areas of the restaurant.
The approach was adapted from the successful New York system, which uses larger RS800 iSeries pendant loudspeakers complemented by RS1001i-II-T subwoofers.
Rather than forcing identical loudspeaker placement into two very different buildings, Sound Insight maintained the overall system philosophy while adapting speaker selection, mounting heights, placement and tuning to the acoustical and architectural conditions of each restaurant.
Behind the loudspeakers, a Control4 platform provides management of multiple audio zones and sources throughout the restaurant. The zoning architecture gives Rocco’s Tacos the flexibility to manage audio throughout different areas of the restaurant while supporting the changing atmosphere over the course of the day.
Installation itself presented no significant integration challenges. The greater emphasis was on optimizing the system once the loudspeakers were installed.
The two Rocco’s Tacos installations demonstrate the value of establishing a proven audio strategy and then adapting it to the individual environment. In Huntington Station, troubleshooting the existing installation revealed the importance of proper pendant height, spacing and low-frequency reinforcement. In Burlington, predictive mapping allowed those lessons to inform the system before installation began. Final equalization and DSP adjustments then optimized performance for the finished space.
"In both locations, the most important thing was the end result and the client’s total satisfaction,” Kaplan concluded. “Would I specify the same SoundTube solution again? One thousand percent, without hesitation.”
