Set across 46,000 sq. metres of land in the west of Turin, Le Gru is the largest shopping mall in Italy. Immersed among its 180 shops is a massive and dedicated food court, occupying the Centre’s Market Square.
Operating under the name ‘Top Food’, it has been set up by Gruppo Pasquettaz. Although there are seven restaurants, the food emporium consists of much more, including Butchery, Self Service and Delicatessen as well as Fish Restaurant, Pizza, Steak House, Self Service Fish & Seafood, Risotteria, Bar American and Sandwich Bar.
Director Roberto Pasquettaz wanted background music to be distributed evenly across the seven restaurant zones and satellite TV images to the plasma relay screens — but wanted local, easily-operable control.
QSC offered a solution and Pasquettaz was reassured by the discreet qualities of the recessed transformer-version AcousticDesign AD-CI52T loudspeakers (and surface-mounted AD-S52T’s). Furthermore, he said he liked the intuitive way in which the settings could be reconfigured in BASIS, QSC’s proprietary DSP.
The project team was overseen by Audio Link, QSC’s territorial distributors, under local representative Giammario Piumatti.
Piumatti said: “The Basis 922az handles many problems — not only the room control but the separate equalisation of each individual zone. It will create a matrix, enabling them to choose their source from MP3 or CD line inputs, and also monitor the amps.
“Mr. Pasquettaz loved the idea that all this could be achieved from a single system, and that if there was a fault in the system it would be diagnosed and flagged up immediately.”
In total 88 QSC AD-CI52T’s and 24 AD-S52T’s have been deployed in a distributed system, powered by four QSC CX204V amplifiers — all controlled from a pair of BASIS 922az processors.
Although the hard surfaces of shopping malls can sometimes be unforgiving, little EQ work was needed to tame what could have been a highly reverberant space — and this was due to the intelligence of the design.
In the Steakhouse two separate loudspeaker clusters (each comprising eight AD-S52T), ceiling-mounted on a Unicol pole provide 360° diffusion, while an AD-CI52T, inset into the base, provides downfill. “This was the logical, and most efficient way of providing even coverage given the layout of the two separate seating areas,” claimed Piumatti.