Montreal-based Scéno Plus, renowned for its theatre design work in Las Vegas, Canada, and around the world, recently completed a major, multi-venue project at Revel, the new $2.4 billion casino-resort at the north end of Atlantic City’s famed boardwalk.
- Scéno Plus was the lead designer for all of the entertainment spaces at the Revel, including the Revelry casino floor, where the company designed, specified and optimized nearly 570 QSC Audio Products AcousticDesign Series ceiling- and surface-mount loudspeakers.
- Scéno Plus was responsible for the design of two large, multipurpose, transformable venues, several bars and various interconnecting spaces at Revel. The resort, which fronts onto the beach, covers 20 acres and, at 47 stories, is the tallest building in Atlantic City.
- In a break with traditional casino design, Revelry’s 130,000-sq.-ft. gaming floor includes windows offering panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean. As daylight fades, audiovisual, lighting and interior design elements dynamically change the ambiance of what are referred to as “neighborhoods” on the floor as the night’s entertainment begins.
- “The client wanted to have a high-end theatrical experience on the gaming floor,” said Simon Léonard, AV Designer, Scéno Plus.
- The constant-voltage distributed audio system on the Revelry casino floor includes 274 QSC AcousticDesign AD-CI52ST ceiling speakers, which employ 5.25-inch LF transducer, a 1-inch titanium dome tweeter and a ported enclosure for greater low frequency extension; 170 QSC AcousticDesign AD-S52T two-way surface mount speakers, also incorporating a 5.25-inch woofer and 1-inch neodymium tweeter; and 125 QSC AcousticDesign AD-C81Tw ceiling-mount 8-inch subwoofers, providing additional low-frequency extension.
- “The AcousticDesign line was a great choice, because the client really wanted to have fullness and richness of both the high-end and the low-end,” said Léonard. “So we needed a product that could suit that large, broad spectrum, and would also be really comfortable to listen to.”
- Despite the significant differences in ceiling height and of finish materials between one neighborhood and the next, the QSC AcousticDesign products were easy to dial in, according to Léonard.
- “The voicing of the whole line is very nice. You go from a low ceiling area to an open part of the casino, where AVI/SPL & CALVI worked hard to maintain a certain level of consistency in the trim heights, but the voicing is really similar. You could also get more of the same response between the ceiling and the surface mount versions, which is very nice. We were really astonished at how we could easily, without eq’ing for hours, get the same response everywhere,” Léonard said. “We were surprised to hear how the AD speakers sounded right out of the box, off-, as well as, on-axis. You can really get something that is consistent throughout the whole coverage area.”
- The speaker system on the casino floor also needed to be of high quality, capable of acting as an extension of the sound systems in several of the featured spaces. These include The Social, a two-story, high-energy show-bar in the center of the gaming floor that hosts a variety of events, including musical guests; the Digipit, an area with a raised runway, two raised stages and space for acrobatic and aerial performances; and the Immersive Dome, an overhead, 360-degree digital video projection installation.
- “There are a couple of features like that on the Revelry floor that the system can take its source from,” Léonard said. “So we put a lot of attention into how we were going to zone the system, just to make sure that we would be able to maintain something that makes sense with the architecture.”
- The changing environments and various show elements are preprogrammed and played out through show control automation. “So the floor manager at any time can override the timeline and select something at the catwalk, or later if there's something happening in the bar and they want to extend the experience onto the floor, they are always able to do so. That's why we had to provide a sound reinforcement system that would reflect or extend the quality of a live event. It's more or less an extension of a concert system.”
- Scéno Plus collaborated on the Revel project with Claude Ricard and Marc St-Jacques of SF Marketing, the QSC distributor for Canada. “We had the opportunity to do a mock up in their facility, so we could really compare what EASE Address was saying to compare it with the real life installation, or as close as we could get it. Those guys were really a big help,” said Léonard. "We were really happy about how it turned out.”
