In early 2024 I was referred by a colleague to help a local restaurant with problems in their background music system. When I arrived, listened, and looked, I was pretty sure the obvious issue was that someone had connected their internet music player incorrectly (putting a stereo, unbalanced source into a balanced TRS input). Once that was fixed the owners asked about making further improvements to the sound quality and coverage of the system.
Seems straightforward, right? But this place was originally built in 1998 and outfitted as a supper club for live music, including video cameras and equipment for sending the shows out to other venues. The overall space is roughly 90 x 90 feet, with the ceiling deck at about 30ft, a four-sided bar in the center, and dining tables all around at varying floor heights. Because it was built for television production there is a 4x4ft steel pipe lighting grid at about 25ft over most of the space. Old theatrical lights hanging from the grid had been refitted with conventional halogen lightbulbs over the dining area.
Also hanging from the grid, facing straight down, were speakers believed to be from the original 1998 installation: Fifteen JBL Control 10 (3-way) and about ten JBL Control 5, plus a few in-ceiling speakers above booth alcoves on the perimeter and in the bathrooms. The Control 10s were all working and sounded fine, the Control 5s all seemed to be dead. The ceiling speakers were a mix. Adding to the fun, all the speakers were fed from amps in a rack located on a mezzanine only accessible by entering a utility closet and climbing a Navy-style metal ladder!
I was able to get architectural drawings of the building, but any documentation about the audio system was long gone. By luck I recognized the installation work of a former local company, so had an idea of how they would have approached cable numbering. We traced out and documented most of the speaker cables by a combination of listening and going up to look using the restaurant’s utility lift. We confirmed that the Control 5s were dead, finding the internal fuses blown, and also had disintegrating woofer surrounds.
I had provided an estimate of the cost to replace all the speakers and the seven or so existing amps (some of which were original and some newer), but it was quite substantial. Plus, I am not a fan of replacing things that are working fine; the large speakers could be replaced as needed. We considered repairing the Control 5s, or buying new ones, but ultimately decided to fix two and replace the rest with FBT Keiron 5C speakers. I was able to modify standard lighting grid clamps to work with the Keiron’s mounting hardware.
Hanging new speakers, rerouting and tracing out missing cables, testing and aiming, all involved either the lift or some very tall ladders, working below and between the lighting grid and other ceiling elements. It was an arduous process that took place over many days because we could only work in the mornings before lunch. Plus, everything up there was covered with the sticky residue from 25 years of aerosolized cooking oil—gross!
The Fun Part
One thing I had included in the cost estimate was some kind of audio processor to enable grouping speakers into zones, and making adjustments from the dining room. The previous system, believe it or not, had taken the single music player feed, gone into a little mixer, and then a set of terminal blocks that distributed mono, balanced audio to all the amps. On the output side, the speakers were connected to amps in various random ways— some by themselves, some doubled up on an output. Whatever had been done originally had clearly been fiddled over the years.
The client wanted the same audio playing everywhere–either BGM, or TV audio for sports. No multipurpose uses, no live music, with the volume controlled by an existing knob at the bar. They did not need or want direct control over the speakers (and I was down with that). So I started looking for a simple DSP “zone controller” with very few of the typical functions, and the ability to control wirelessly.
After checking products from all the usual suspects, I came upon the MOTU Monitor 8, which is actually intended for live stage or studio monitoring, and also has internal mixing and a USB interface for computer I/O. It does way more than what I needed but also does exactly what I needed for this wacky setup. I have used MOTU products over the years in audio production environments, so I’m comfortable with the company and their products’ quirks, but I imagine it’s an unusual choice for restaurant sound.
The first attraction of the Monitor 8 is the eight line inputs and fourteen outputs, which would allow me to do some source routing and channel combining, send out to the downstairs volume control (in mono), come back up, and provide discretely adjustable feeds to the amps. I tried to group the speakers and amps based on where they are in the room, and whether the speakers are large or small.
The second attraction is the ability to control the Monitor 8 from a browser, using its built-in web server. I wanted to stay independent of the restaurant’s network, so I connected a Wifi access point directly to the Monitor 8’s Ethernet port and configured them so that the WAP is simply a wireless connection to the Monitor 8. Using my phone or laptop I enter the IP address assigned to the Monitor 8 in a browser, and the control GUI comes up! It’s great for walking the floor and making tweaks.
The webGUI has live metering, and so does the front of the Monitor 8, which is quite helpful if I’m up at the rack and want to confirm what’s going on without a browser. You can also control volumes from the front panel and access various menu functions, though it’s easier from the GUI.
This is not a simple device, and it takes some time to get used to the menu structure. In some cases, MOTU chose to use the same word (like “Aux”) for different functions, so that can be confusing initially. It also requires some study to be clear on how the outputs work, since they come in groups (A-F) but don’t all have the same physical connections. For this job, I took the unit home so I could do all the setup (and make most of the mistakes) at a convenient pace. Plus, there was a certain amount of back and forth between configuring the MOTU and making decisions about the connections that I was drawing in CAD.
If you’ve worked with Dante you’ll be familiar with the “matrix” view where inputs are patched to outputs and, again, terminology can be a bit confusing at first. Once those patches are made you can switch to the mixer window to make audio adjustments. A panel along the left of the screen allows adding or removing channels from the mixer view, which can be handy if you have a lot of channels but are using a phone! You can also show or hide mixer functions like EQ, compression, etc.
I really like that just about everything can be renamed as desired. This is particularly useful because, for example, I could name outputs with both their Monitor 8 name and the speaker group they feed. That information was also in my documentation, but it’s nice not to have to mentally cross-reference.
I also like that you can save presets for the whole machine and for many individual settings, and the unit comes with a handful of presets configured for typical applications. Since this is a hands-off operation, with only one active setting, being able to recall the entire device to a known state is always good practice (and the file can be exported to use in another Monitor 8 in case of failure).
Speaking of failures, I was particularly concerned about that because this restaurant really needs their music and sports audio every night. Realizing that if the MOTU went down they would have zip, I put together a little patch panel that mults together a bunch of TRS jacks. The idea is that I (or someone) could physically move cables around so that the signal going into the MOTU goes instead into the mult panel, and then some of the amps could be fed from the other jacks so they would all get the same audio—basically like the way it was originally wired. The levels and balance would be imperfect, but at least they’d have sound.
As mentioned, the Monitor 8 can do many things that weren’t needed on this job (though I did dial in some limiting as speaker protection). It can be used as a substantial DAW computer interface, with more inputs and outputs available on ADAT optical connectors or via an AVB audio network. The extensive PDF manual explains all the options.
So far, the Monitor 8 has worked perfectly for the task, and it was great to be able to walk the floor and make tweaks, with my laptop or phone, without needing any special software. I was happy to find a product that fit the unusual conditions of this particular job and doesn’t require any programming, unlike most DSPs
