Located on NYC’s Lower East Side and opened in late 2015, the Hotel Indigo offers
patrons a combination of sleek modern design and local flavour with an eye – and
ear – to providing them with a unique experience. Central to that experience is the
hotel’s 15th floor, indoor/outdoor, rooftop bar and restaurant, Mr. Purple.

Created by hospitality industry leader, Gerber Group and designed by Creme Design
to capture an artist-loft ambiance, Mr. Purple features an audio system comprised
of class-leading TANNOY loudspeakers and LAB GRUPPEN C Series amplifiers.

Although Ernie Lake of EL Media Group designed the audio system, Scott Gerber,
Principle and Chief Executive Officer of Gerber Group drove the choice of TANNOY
and LAB GRUPPEN. “We have a relationship with Scott because we did the Viceroy
Hotel and consulted on other projects for him, and maintain some of his other bars.
We’ve used TANNOY and LAB GRUPPEN in other venues and they work well for him,
so it was an easy sell,’ Lake says.

“It’s great that EL Media use TANNOY and LAB GRUPPEN in so many installs, and it’s
really cool when the products gets called out by the end user,’ says Sam
Spennacchio of Audio Associates Ltd., who represent TANNOY and LAB GRUPPEN in
NYC. “That doesn’t happen very often.’

In all, 8 TANNOY VX 8.2s, powered by 2 LAB GRUPPEN C28:4s, are deployed in Mr.
Purple. Another C28:4 is deployed for the restaurant/bar’s third party subs.
Additionally, 4 TANNOY VX 5.2s are used as fill speakers, located in a bookshelf in
the bar.

For the outdoor decks and pool adjacent to Mr. Purple, Lake opted for TANNOYAMS
Series loudspeakers. In all, 14 AMS 5DCs and 4 AMS 6DCs driven by LAB GRUPPEN
C20:8s. TANNOY AMS 5DCs, also powered by LAB GRUPPEN amps, were deployed in
the hotel’s entryway.

The AMS were chosen, in part, for their weatherproofing, Lake says: “But the AMS
is also a speaker you can easily hide. They obviously wanted good sound, but didn’t
want to see any speakers on the terraces. Scott also wanted to contain the sound,
so we placed the AMS 5DCs low on the perimeter of the outdoor deck. They’re
small, but give us more than enough sound and coverage.’

Some areas of the bar required acoustic treatment, Lake continues, owing to
reflections from windows and hard surfaces. There are many spaces, he says,
whose owners give little thought to audio beyond covering the space with painfully
loud, sound that’s intelligible, only to the point that you know you’re listening to
music, but wish you weren’t.

At Mr. Purple, the comfort of the patrons is first and foremost, Gerber concludes:
“This room has very high ceilings so we could have put in much bigger speakers
and a much bigger system, but that’s not what we were going for.’