Powersoft X8 Amplifiers Bring Interactive Performances to Life at Las Vegas's Sake Rok Restaurant

The city of Las Vegas is known as well for its incredible live entertainment as well as its towering casinos. Now, one Las Vegas restaurant is bringing musical performance tableside for a truly memorable interactive dining experience. Sake Rok, which opened in April of this year, features a high-end sushi-centric menu and wait staff that doubles as singing and dancing MCs. Their audience-participatory performances channel Japan's vibrant pop culture, while ensuring that dining patrons are involved in all the fun. With a clear vision in mind, Sake Rok reached out to specialist integrator All Things Integrated (ATI) to design a sound, lighting, and show control system that would deliver club level performance with push-button ease. To capture the energy and vitality of a true live concert, ATI president Robert Athey turned to the performance of Powersoft's X8 amplifier to drive the entire main sound system.

As soon as Athey spoke with Sake Rok's owners and understood the level of sound reproduction needed to achieve the desired dining experience, he knew that a high-performance amplifier was essential. "They wanted the music to really take center stage, and I feel strongly that the amplifier selection is just as important as the speaker selection," Athey says. "In fact I had told the owners from the outset that we would only do the install if they agreed to go with Powersoft because I knew nothing else would deliver what was required." Athey had previously specified Powersoft on installations at the Inspired Theater and Container Park, both in Las Vegas, and was intimately familiar with the company's pedigree. "They sound great and the performance is there, so they've become my first choice for any application."

Athey designed a system that included five zones of three Pioneer XY-101 10" two-way speakers each, bolstered by three Pioneer XY-218S double 18" subwoofers for the house. He was able to power the entire main system with just a single X8 amplifier. Athey and his team used Powersoft's Armonía software to process the signals for speaker distribution. "Sound quality is huge for me, and it was easy to achieve great results with Armonía," he says. "With any other manufacturer I would have turned to other outboard processing before hitting the amplifier, but the Powersoft DSP gave me exactly what I needed." Powersoft's reliability also made him confident that running the whole system on a single amplifier was a no-risk choice. "That's the beauty of this system, the X8 is running the entire restaurant and I feel totally confident in it."

One of the challenges Athey faced was a short timeline. "We only had only six weeks from the time we were selected until opening day, so we had to move quickly," he says. Working with a team that included himself, a project manager, a main systems engineer, and his Las Vegas operations representative, they were able to implement a fully operational system right on time. The system is able to switch from normal operation into "performance mode" at the push of a button, making it easy for any Sake Rok staff member to activate when the time comes for the wait staff to break into their routine, with help from an Alcorn McBride Inc. show controller that integrates with Armonía.

Since the installation was completed just weeks ago, Sake Rok diners have been delighted by the great food and high production value performances all summer long. But the waiters aren't the only ones performing. "We've run the system at full bore many times and the X8 has never clipped," Athey says. "Not to mention that the high end is clean and smooth and there's a vast degree of power behind every single subwoofer hit." Sake Rok's owners have been sharing in Athey's enthusiasm about Powersoft meantime. "The client has expressed to us how thankful they are that we had recommended Powersoft for the installation. From performance to reliability, the X8 has been top notch."