XTA means ultimate sound for exclusive Dubai nightclub

Located beneath the luxury Fairmont Hotel, one of the most distinctive buildings in the rapidly-expanding urbanisation of Dubai, the 400 Club is a highly exclusive 700 capacity nightclub favoured by young, high end customers.

Decorated in a classic French style, the club was originally scheduled to open in December 2005. But the owners delayed the opening by nearly a year in order to ensure everything was absolutely perfect.

With a choice of music heavily influenced by the UK club scene, the audio system needed to be versatile but of a supremely high quality to complement the rest of the peerless facilities. To facilitate this, XTA’s DP series processors were the choice of local audio specialists Reference Audio.

“The décor features heavy drapes and furniture everywhere,” says Reference Audio’s Brent Davenport. “Our brief was that we could not fly any loudspeakers above the dance floor. Everything had to be in a place that was not invasive to the overall appearance of the club. We specified the XTA DP428 because we needed to balance four zones in the main area and, furthermore, to separately process and control the main system and a further sub system installed in the separate VIP room.”

The DP428 controls an AD Systems compact line array in each room, driven by Lab Gruppen amps. “The installation itself was straightforward, mainly performed by a local installation company under my project management,” says Brent. “The most complex part from my point of view was that the system is controlled as six separate areas, which needed to be individually set up.”