Symetrix Clinches the Title for Sam's Sports Grill

Sam's Sports Grill opened in 2000, and Nashvillians have voted it the Best Sports Bar in the city for ten years in a row. Clearly, Sam Sanchez and his team know how to deliver a great sports bar experience. Food created from scratch (with gluten-free options!), dozens of beers on tap, and a whopping 70" flat screen TV with all the major sports packages, make Sam's Sports Grill a winner. However, like any establishment, Sam's Sports Grill had room for improvement. Recently, Sam chose Darrin Fabish, account manager at Nashville's Audio Electronics, Inc. (AEI), to overhaul the existing sound system at the Hillsboro Village location. The overhaul resulted in replacing all the speakers and adding a Symetrix Jupiter 8 App Based Turn-Key DSP. The unit delivers multizone content with user control achieved through Symetrix's forward-thinking ARC-WEB interface for smartphones and other Internet-connected devices.

Sam's Sports Grill's Hillsboro Village location is just a short walk from the AEI offices. "I meet some friends there for lunch regularly," says Darrin. "As sometimes happens, I was talking to them about upgrading another client's sound system when Sam overheard me. Although the bar has a great visual setup with plenty of high-definition screens, the audio system lacked zoned audio. Although they could have different games on at the bar and on the patio, the whole place had to listen to one or the other - or music."

After determining that AEI could give Sam's Sports Grill a fresh start, Darrin suggested replacing components of the old system. "Eight-ohm speakers were wired for 70 V and vice versa," he says. "Residential and commercial components were mixed. This system really needed attention." Darrin retained the original inputs to the system, two DirecTV receivers, a jukebox, and a music source, and added a microphone input for use on bar trivia night. In addition, a pair of TOA amplifiers and the existing equipment rack were repurposed in the new system.

With eight mic- or line-level inputs and eight outputs, a Symetrix Jupiter 8 DSP forms the core of the new system and leaves a few inputs and outputs for the bar to grow into. "The Jupiter 8 has all of the necessary processing facilities, including easy zone management," says Darrin. "And given everything that it can do, it's very competitively priced." Three zones now comprise the system so that the patio, bar, and seating areas can all have different input sources and volumes. When music is selected, the background music source plays unless a customer plays the jukebox, in which case the background music is muted until the jukebox song is finished. A Bose FreeSpace 3 combined subwoofer/full-range system provides output for each of the zones, and Bose DS-100 surface mounted speakers in the patio lure customers from the sidewalk outside.

"Symetrix's ARC-WEB technology was a huge selling point at Sam's," says Darrin. "Both the owner and the manager are running ARC-WEB from their phones. There's really something to the fact that these guys can just walk over to a zone and adjust the input and volume right then and there. No more adjusting the volume and then walking over to see if it's loud enough. They seem to really like it. I'm starting to pitch this Symetrix-based solution at other locations. A lot of the owners are young and hip, and they love the ARC-WEB technology." For those rare occasions when the owner or manager isn't around, staff can still make necessary adjustments from a hardwired Symetrix ARC-2e wall panel remote.