1. TECHNICAL FOCUS: SOUND
These days, it seems that nightlife in
America is headed in two directions at
once. Even as the Las Vegas Strip is
being taken over by mega-clubs
packed with every technological
amenity known to man, there is an
equally pronounced trend toward
warmer, more sophisticated venues
that represent a 21st-century take on
the famous nightclubs that flourished
in the years between the First and
Second World Wars. These clubs tend
to be intimate, musically eclectic, and
designed with an eye to delivering the
best possible sound. A fine example is
Fenix, which opened in San Rafael,
California last winter.
Fenix is the brainchild of Laura van
Galen, a local entrepreneur whose
company, Bleu Marketing Solutions,
is a full-service direct marketing
agency with a client list that includes
Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, and SAP.
The club is located in a former cloth-
ing store in the city’s downtown dis-
trict. Van Galen, who says the project
is the culmination of a long-held
dream, teamed up with Merl
Saunders, Jr., a Bay Area music
notable. (As a production technician,
he toured with Michael Jackson,
David Crosby, and Frank Zappa; later,
he held executive positions with
Gibson Guitars and Dean Markley
Strings before becoming executive
director of the San Francisco chapter
of the Recording Academy.) He has
made good on van Galen’s vision of a
varied musical menu. Recent book-
ings include America’s Got Talent
finalists The Tim Hockenberry Trio;
classical crossover group The
Modern Mandolin Quartet; a capella
band The Bobs; Steve Winwood side-
man/Brazilian jazz fusion musicians
Jose Neto and The Neto Band; and
The Intimate Club
By: David Barbour
Designing a sound system for Fenix
The club’s main room.
l i g h t i n g
t r u c k i n g
p r o d u c t i o n s u p p o r t
s a l e s
s e r v i c e
s t o r a g e
8 1 5 . 8 9 9 . 9 8 8 8
CHICAGO LOS ANGELES
w w w . u p s t a g i n g . c o m
821 Park Avenue
Sycamore, Illinois 60178
Ph. 815-899-9888
Fax 815-899-1080
8820 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 240
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Phone: (310) 859-9800
Fax: (310) 859-2804
LeRoy Bennett - Production Design
Photos:JohnMerkl
Copyright Lighting&Sound America September 2013 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html

2. the “sultry chanteuse” Lavay Smith &
her Red Hot Skillet Lickers. There is
also a five-person house band.
The club is meant, in part, to enliv-
en San Rafael’s downtown by creat-
ing a new nightlife option. One imag-
ines that, with a community that
includes such employers as
Lucasfilm; THX; video game makers
Visual Concepts, Totally Games, and
Factor 5; film special effects supplier
Stormfront Studios; and Dominican
University of California, there should
be a substantial potential audience
for van Galen and Saunder’s adult-
oriented programming.
Beyond the creation of an attractive
venue with notable musical talent and
fine food (the menu was created by
noted local chef Amey Shaw and
executive chef Shawn Paul), van
Galen’s concept included a significant
live streaming component. According
to the mission statement on the club’s
website: “Our project is made up of
four entities: 1) fenixlive.com, an inter-
active website bringing local live music
and relationships to the web; 2) The
Fenix Supper Club, to live feed musi-
cal performances from our stage to
The setup for live streaming. The front-of-house mixing station.
Safety Above All ElseSafety Above All Else
www.iastage.comwww.iastage.com
Photographer: Matthew Millman
The Tension Wire Grid

3. TECHNICAL FOCUS: SOUND
the web while serving tempting food
and delicious beverages and building
musical awareness to our local audi-
ences; 3) the Fenix Project, to edu-
cate, mentor, and support young musi-
cians in our community; and 4) Fenix
Productions, to video-capture live per-
formances to showcase the ‘The
Talent Among Us’ [a trademarked
term] on the web.”
But, of course, it all begins with
good live sound, so van Galen and
Saunders enlisted the aid of John
Storyk, of Walters-Storyk Design
Group (WSDG), the acoustics and
audio/video design firm. (The firm’s
impressive live performance venue
credits include Jazz at Lincoln Center,
Broadway’s supper club 54 Below, the
Rockwood Music Hall in downtown
Manhattan, and Le Poisson Rouge,
the popular Greenwich Village venue.)
Storyk notes that, given van Galen’s
emphasis on live streaming, the need
to create pristine live sound was espe-
cially pressing. With a budget of
roughly $5 million, there was no room
for mistakes.
“Skype was a critical tool in our col-
laboration with John and Joshua
Morris [project manager and designer
for WSDG],” says Saunders. “We regu-
larly walked them through the site with
live iPad video to review the construc-
tion process. Their input on everything
from control room design to HVAC
ductwork was invaluable. They partici-
pated in every fact of the acoustic
design of this project, including gear
and console selection review.”
Fenix, which covers 8,600 sq. ft., is
laid out in a long, narrow shoebox for-
mat. (The architect is Tim Murphy, of
Tim Murphy Design Associates.)
Entering the two-story high main
room, which seats 200, one is immedi-
ately aware of a pair of dropped ceil-
ings over the front bar and dining sec-
tions. Storyk, who notes that the room
“had great bones,” says, “Twin record-
ing studio-style ceiling clouds con-
structed with a combination of broad-
band and membrane absorption, were
floated over those areas.” These help
to create “an ideal sweet spot for the
audience while simultaneously defus-
ing audience/dining noise away from
the performers. We angled the ‘clouds’
upward from the front to the rear of
the room, and we added aesthetically
pleasing wall panels as absorptive
acoustic treatments. These elements
serve dual purposes: They enhance
the audio quality of the onstage per-
formance, and they inhibit intrusive
patron noise.”
The room’s loudspeaker system
features a pair of EAW QX596 units for
the mains, part of the company’s QX
series of units optimized for perma-
nent installation. The QX596 is a bi-
amplified three-way system in a sym-
metrical compound trapezoidal enclo-
sure. These are matched with custom
EAW subwoofers. Filling out the sys-
tems are one EAW MW15 and four
MW12 micro-wedge monitors and
Ashly KLR-5000, KLR-4000, and KLR-

4. www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • September 2013 • 87
2000 power amps.
The extensive lineup of mics avail-
able to visiting artists includes a set
of Shure classics—SM58s, SM57s,
and a BETA 57A. From Sennheiser,
there are two e 865 condenser mics,
two e 604 drum mics, and two e 906
drum and guitar mics. Also on the list
are one Electro-Voice RE320, one
AKG D112 kick drum mic, two Line 6
SD-V75 wireless systems, plus a
number of DI boxes.
Front-of-house and monitor mixes
are controlled by a Midas PRO2 con-
sole, a product that was launched
just last year to much fanfare. It is
billed as bringing the capabilities of
the company’s XL8 into a more com-
pact, less expensive package and
features 56 mic/line inputs, 64 input
channels, 32 analog outputs (includ-
ing two stereo local monitor outputs),
two AES3 outputs, two AES3 inputs,
27 sample-synchronous, phase-
coherent buses, and six stereo FX
engines, among others. Other control
gear includes a Midas DL251 remote
stage box, beyerdynamic DT 770
PRO headphones, and Tascam
CD/iPod dock deck. The front-of-
house position is located at the rear
of the room, providing a clear view of
the artists while eliminating any con-
cerns about blocking any audience
member’s view of the stage.
Located on the second floor is the
master control room, which receives
feeds to the NewTek TriCaster 455
and the Avid Pro Tools HD native sys-
tem from three Panasonic AW-
HE50SN HD-SDI pan/tilt/zoom cam-
eras as well as AES audio feeds from
the Midas Pro2 console, splitting the
signal at the Midas DL251 stage box
for the Pro Tools system. “Laura’s
concept of establishing a subscrip-
tion-based online audience for our
live shows requires our mixer/director
to work on the fly as the performance
unfolds,” Saunders says, adding that
the Midas console’s “basic configura-
tion has been customized to meet our
live streaming requirements. Our con-
trol room is equipped with a NewTek
TriCaster 455 for complete live pro-
duction and streaming, an Apple MP
2.4 for editing, an Avid Pro Tools HD
Native, and interface for remixing for
subsequent CD—but not DVD—distri-
bution. The system is designed to
enable us to record live projects,
which we plan to do when the club is
dark on Mondays,” another reason
WSDGs’ expertise was sought out.
Fenix joins a local live music scene
that includes a number of venues,
including the reopened George’s
nightclub on Fourth Street, Bob
Weir’s TRI Studios in San Rafael, the
new Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill
Valley, and Grateful Dead bassist Phil
Lesh’s recently opened Terrapin
Crossroads in San Rafael. “We’re
hoping the Marin music renaissance
will keep going,” van Galen says. “In
the past, it seems to keep coming
and going and not sticking. I hope we
can stick.”