Booom! Ibiza chooses Pioneer Professional Audio club speaker system

The hugely anticipated Booom! Ibiza has become the world’s first club to specify a bespoke Pioneer club sound system, which pumped out its characteristic deep, warm, enveloping sound to impress the crowds at Booom’s opening on 15th July.

Booom is the high-spec vision of Giuseppe Cipriani, of the prestigious Cipriani hospitality group, supported by club industry veterans Danny Whittle and Mark Netto. The team has designed the mid-size capacity venue from the dance floor up, with a focus on service, comfort and unrivalled sound. It was therefore essential they selected the richest club sound system possible.

“When we heard the test system in Tokyo, the quality absolutely convinced us Pioneer was the right choice. Now it’s installed and the club is open, we’re blown away by how impressive it sounds,” says club owner, Giuseppe Cipriani.

Choosing Pioneer to build a bespoke sound system was an opportunity for Booom to access the industry’s best sound engineering talent; Pioneer sub-brand TAD has been known for high quality audio for decades, while Pioneer DJ boasts unrivalled expertise in the pro-DJ market.

“I’ve had a long history working with Pioneer in Ibiza,” explains Danny Whittle. “When they told me about the team they’d assembled, I realised we were dealing with people who’d installed some of the world’s best sound systems. We were interested straight away.”

Pioneer established a partnership with the legendary Gary Stewart of Gary Stewart Audio (GSA), along with Powersoft, the amplifier manufacturer of choice for many top ranking system designers and sound engineers. To build on this heritage and lead the club audio business, Pioneer brought on board Alex Barrand, the sound engineer responsible for the Ministry of Sound London’s award-winning system upgrade in 2008.

“Pioneer DJ has long been in the lifeblood of Ibiza, being ever-present in the DJ booths of the island’s leading venues and biggest parties. So moving into the pro-audio market is a natural extension to achieve a 360-degree club solution,” explains Mark Grotefeld, General Manager for Pioneer Europe. “We wanted to team up with a boutique sound genius to complement our R&D expertise and scale, and we found this in the late Gary Stewart. The result is a mind-blowing tribute to his life and work.”

Booom commissioned Pioneer to design the sound system for the entire venue, including the main dance floor, VIP dance floor, DJ console, bar floor, upper bar, VIP rooms on levels two and three, and DJ VIP area.

To keep clubbers on their feet all night, the Booom team wanted the best-in-class sound: a combination of deep, resonant bass, a punchy chest kick, and well-defined high frequencies. For the bar and lounge areas, the system needed to provide a warm and energetic sound that was still comfortable for guests wanting to talk yet feel the music.

To meet these challenges, the Pioneer team installed four three-metre-high GS-WAVE stacks in each corner of the dance floor. The GS-WAVE’s deep, warm bass is provided by a WAV-SUB multi-fold hyperbolic horn subwoofer with two 18-inch rear-loaded drivers, and an optional large horn extension that adds another 4 dB at 50 Hz. Two high-power WAV-LOW speakers deliver a tight punchy kick in the low to mid range. Finally the WAV-LENS is loaded with two coaxial compression drivers, to ensure crystal clear sound reproduction, and Pioneer’s signature Acoustic Lens for a wide horizontal dispersion.

The DJ console features six XY-122 12-inch monitors and a pair of XY-215S 15-inch quasi-bandpass subwoofers. In-fill is supplied across the club by a further thirty-nine XY-122 speakers, ten XY-81 8-inch ultra compact loud speakers, and fifteen XY-118S 18-inch bass reflex subwoofers. The whole system is powered by Powersoft K Series amplifiers – seven K-6s, eleven K-2s and twenty-four K-3s – all with in-built DSP.

The Powersoft K Series amplifiers optimise the performance of the Pioneer club speaker system, with pre-set data and networked DSP. The compact amps combine industry-leading energy efficiency with high power output for maximum performance.

According to Simon Dunmore, Label Manager at Defected in the House, part of Defected Records, the reaction to the installation has been overwhelmingly positive.

“The Pioneer sound system in Booom is a sonic powerhouse. The highs are crisp and clear and lows pack powerful punch. I am very impressed and, judging from the dancefloor reactions, so are the clubbers,” he says.

The Booom installation is the first in a line of Pioneer bespoke systems due to be announced, including venues in Ibiza and across the world.