AV Case Study: Chatswood RSL Yogi’s Sports Bar
An under-utilised space has been transformed into one of the best sports bars in town, with a luxe micro-LED display and K-Array audio solution as the centrepiece.
17 April 2025
Story:/ Christopher Holder
WED Group has a black belt in RSL AV. Sure, it’s happy to handle most AV integration work but Matthew Joyce and his team has developed something like a licensed club AV cheat code.
Clubs generally have more TVs than most venues. Without properly considered control, those displays can be a total albatross around the neck of managers and staff. Often each display needs its own corresponding IR remote controller. But if you have enough of the same TV one remote can often start messing with another TV nearby. Regardless, you’re likely to have a shoebox full of near identical remotes, often inside an old toilet roll to improve its ‘accuracy’. Each TV can generally tune to a variety of sources such as Foxtel, free to air and perhaps digital signage. But once selected, it’s another operation to select the appropriate audio for that zone. Anyway, you get the idea… it can be a horrific waste of time and patience.
WED Group’s brainwave was to derive the audio from the TV itself (not directly from the Foxtel box, for example) such that when staff change the ‘channel’ on the main TV in the zone it automatically brings the correct audio with it. WED Group favours RTI for control, providing staff with straightforward touch control. The displays can handle video in a standard way – often by RF modulation or via a video-over-IP system. As far as audio goes: WED Group uses the lightpipe digital audio output of the TV as it’s independent of any volume control on the TV, which goes into an AVPro Edge Long Range Audio Extender, then over category cable to a receiver in the AV rack that injects analogue audio into the DSP for signal processing. WED Group favours a Biamp Tesira Server for this role.
This approach makes light work of setups that feature multiple Foxtel boxes and a bunch of displays. Chatswood RSL has plenty of both, in fact, it has six Foxtel boxes.
Samsung displays feature throughout, with the 1.5PP LED (left) as the jewel in the crown, flanked by K-Array Kobra loudspeakers.
SHOWSTOPPER
The showstopper at Chatswood RSL is a 1.5mm pixel pitch Samsung LED in the new Yogi’s sports bar. It’s a stunner. Immediately in front of it are two lounges for around eight patrons. Who knows how early you need to arrive, drinking lemon squash all day, to reserve those seats on State of Origin night. Whatever it takes, it’d be worth it.
Matthew Joyce knew the big screen was going to be the focus and wanted to ensure he got the audio absolutely spot on. Elsewhere in the bar he was specifying Sonance in-ceiling loudspeakers (except for a small complement of surfacemount alternatives where there wasn’t a ceiling, as such) to provide blanket coverage of every nook ’n’ cranny. But he wanted an audio solution for the big screen that matched the focal point and pulling power of the display. He needed something that projected from the screen, that would provide enough power and punch to match the excitement of a big game with the room heaving with sports fans.
Matthew could recall being impressed during a K-Array demo with the power and pattern control of the Kobra column loudspeaker, so decided to give distributor, Australis, a buzz. Australis was happy to oblige with a detailed EASE plot of the space.
“The proposed setup would go louder and provide better coverage than anything else we considered,” noted Matthew Joyce. “The dispersion left-to-right and down the room measured out very evenly in the prediction software. It meant the people in the best seats weren’t going to have their heads taken off, while those deeper into the room would get the same sort of energy. I was reassured and decided to go ahead with the Kobra solution.”
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the Samsung 1.5mm LED deserves a high-quality audio solution
K-Array Tornados were installed flush into the ceiling tiles further down the room. The Kobras are elegantly integrated into the front display joinery.
SNAKE & WIND
K-Array describes the Kobra-KK102 as a one metre-long passive loudspeaker comprised of 16 x 2-inch neodymium drivers. Two different impedance values 8Ω / 32Ω allows the user to select between wide or narrow coverage.
Matthew combined the pair of Kobras with a KU212 sub installed under the LED display. It’s a very neat solution.
“One of the challenges was the distance from the comms room where the K-Array KA34 DSP amp is located,” explains Matthew Joyce. “It’s quite a hike for running low-impedance audio – if not for the Kobra arrays then certainly for the sub. So we used heavy gauge cable to make sure everything ran cleanly back to the AV rack and stayed neat.”
More K-Array loudspeakers (Tornado KT-2C) are installed into the ceiling, placed further down the room and time aligned, just to freshen up the sound apparently emanating from the Kobras.
“The Samsung 1.5mm LED deserves a high-quality audio solution,” concluded Matthew Joyce. “The Kobra package is very neat and the client loves it.”
Australis Music (K-Array): australismusic.com.au
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