Basement Venue Gets Audio Overhaul

London’s latest entertainment experience has just launched, with the newly created Studio 88 setting out to offer punters something a little different to the usual live music event, according to PSN Europe.

Like many of the capital’s most iconic venues, it is built into the basement of a building on Whitcomb Street in the heart of the city’s entertainment district. And with enough room for 350 guests, it should provide a fairly intimate atmosphere in which to enjoy bands.

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What sets this project apart from the average venue of this kind is that the house band that plays each night will not be sticking to a set of original tracks or racing through a pre-planned list of covers. Instead, it will take requests from the audience throughout the evening and only play tunes that people want to hear.

This concept is apparently not something that has been tried before. But by sticking to requests and nothing else, it will certainly be easy to engage the audience and keep their attention, even as time passes and more merriment is had.

A Real Revival

Before Studio 88 was reborn in this fresh new guise, it was an otherwise unremarkable city centre night spot in which DJs played generic music and where there was not much of a loyal crowd to help it maintain its momentum. It is no surprise that this led to its closure and subsequent refurbishment.

Any basement company in London will tell you that there are a number of challenges associated with transforming rooms that sit below ground level into liveable spaces, much less creating a place that people will want to pay to visit.

This is particularly true in the case of Studio 88, which has the added challenge of having to make live music sound good in an area with lots of unusual shapes and surfaces.

Live music is much more dynamic than tracks being played from a record, CD or digital source. This makes it less easy to predict and creates problems in terms of how to set up the audio system to showcase it effectively.

The system chosen to achieve this in Studio 88 comes from Martin Audio, with a combination of speakers ensuring that sound is projected effectively to allow everyone on the dance floor and the main room of the venue to get the most out of their visit.

The relatively low ceiling of the basement set-up is another challenge that needs to be overcome, as it can actually trap the sound and cause it to bounce around in ways that disrupt the listening experience.

Such complications are common even in domestic basement conversions, especially if the room is intended to be used as a home cinema, as is often the case. But with an experience basement company in London it can be straightforward to turn any project of this kind into a success that can be enjoyed by residents for years to come.