Liv Nightclub, the latest edition to the iconic party district that is Surfers Paradise, boasts the world’s largest nightclub LED matrix with wall to wall and ceiling of full blown light action with moving headlights, full colour lasers and haze machines.

Owner Craig Missen and Bastian Foersterling wanted something no one has ever done before in a nightclub. They wanted a room that could change with the music and the theme of the night. They wanted the latest in technology and they wanted to build the place themselves. They wanted people to walk into the venue and be amazed.

According to Bastian, the main point of a good LED system is the control of it (effects engine).

“I have used many programs in the past including e:cue which years ago started catering for matrix lighting, things have advanced and I had only one choice - I wanted the Madrix program from Germany but they don’t sell LED or controllers,” explained Bastian. “After speaking with Madrix they put us onto a growing NZ company that specializes in controllers called Stellarscape. Together with the controllers, we ordered Cree produced custom LED strands. We now had the LED, the controllers and a dongle for the largest amount of universes ever made by Madrix.”

It was at this point that the challenge began as there aren’t many lighting installation companies out there that would even go near a project consisting of 90,000 LED’s over 400m2. It turns out that this could only be done in-house. After maybe a dozen major engineering designs Bastian figured out a way to mount and line up the 320m2 on the ceiling as well as the 80ms they have on the walls.

“We ended up using 450m2 of 4.5mm thick plexiglas (supplied by Holland Plastics), 1.2km of 12.7mm square tube as a frame for the plexiglas (supplied by Sheetmetal Designs), 3km of 2.5mm electrical cable, 5km of Cat5 network cable, and countless nuts bolts and threaded rod!” he said. “We had an amazing building team lead by Michael Johnson who I have used in many nightclub projects in the past. There are few builders who would have taken on such a crazy six month build.”

There were many hurdles to overcome including that they needed the height of the ceiling to remain as high as possible. A full sprinkler system, detection system, emergency lights, house lights, bar work lights, cameras, moving head light bases, lasers, postmix pipes, water pipes all to be hidden in the ceiling within a gap of only 160mm … basically the length of your hand. As you can imagine they wanted as much LED to be visible.

“In the ceiling we also needed the countless cables for power and network as well as controllers,” added Bastian. “For serviceability all the 34 ceiling sheets had to be removable and any utility connected to the panel had to be disconnectable.”

Obviously the task of lining up 90,000 LED’s obviously wasn’t enough of a challenge! As you can imagine a light every 90mm has to line up in a grid and it has to be straight from corner of the room to the other. So they have every utility known to clubs in a space of 160mm, they have air conditioning all around the room and must not impede the view, it has to be serviceable and due to controller constraints each sheet (ceiling section) needed to be 4m x 3m max.

The air con ended up being custom made to be triangular and fit in the ceiling corners all around the room, special slits were made to run between the 90mm gap of the LED so becoming invisible at night-time whilst providing 360 degree air con.

The orientation of the LED had to come from the DJ corner of the club in a room that isn’t square and has pillars so sheet design had to be in such a way that corners of the removable sheet didn’t wrap around a pillar.

“A big thanks to Miles from Fire Systems Australia as he was on hand throughout the project moving pipes and making sprinkler heads just poke through the plexiglas (between LED’s),” said Bastian. “A special thanks also to the guys from Dial-A-Plumber who worked endlessly with us moving pipes and making custom fittings just so utilities all worked while avoiding each other. It was the most technical project where basic trades were so vital. After the install the position of every LED to each other had to be patched into the Madrix computer. Since each celing sheet could only have a max of 1344 lights (16 strands of 84 LED’s max) and there were pillars and angles walls to work the strands around it made for a very complex patch. A 2m x 2m map of the entire ceiling was made basically connecting the dots and plotting their location. This then had to be patched into the Madrix program.”

The set up of the technology was the easy part compared to how it was designed and built. Essentially there are about 80 Stellarscape controllers. Each controller can handle 16 strands of Cree produced LED. There are 8 basic wall strands and 3 different ones for the ceiling. The ceiling strands are in a configuration of 20, 42 or 84 lights. This meant the ceiling sheet had a maximum of 1344 lights. The ceiling strands have 12cm of wire between each node as to allow easy install as the LED was installed in snake formations. The wall strands had very custom spacing since for the top 360mm from the ceiling it would be running down a 45 degree air con cover.

“To preserve the 90mm pitch of the LED from across the room we spaced the lights 127mm for the first 6 lights and then 90mm for the horizontal ones,” explained Bastian. “This means from across the room and the eye’s inability to focus on LED’s completely hides the air con bulkhead. Every controller has a network cable which connects to 2x HP switches linkes to each other on a giga network. These two switches are linked to a server running the Madrix software.”

The bar lighting for staff is a trapeze halogen lighting which looks like floating bulbs, used as they needed lights for staff but didn’t want it in the same level as the main effect LED’s.

Twelve Litecraft LED Beam 288 moving heads punctuate the ceiling whilst other lighting includes four LED MiniPAR E stationary LED par cans and two 2000mW lasers by brightlite. On the outside of the building there are twelve VISIO LED bars as well as RGB LED tape.

“We also have a two-sided 6.67mm pitch LED sign capable of 192×288 resolution per side…also purchased through ULA Group,” added Bastian.

A Nexo audio system was chosen for the club as they wanted a system that was robust, could take a flogging and still come out sounding sweet at the end of it.

“Nexo has had a proven record in both the Domestic and international touring markets and is well supported in Australia,” said Nathan Wright, Audio Designer. “Along with the Nexo NX amplifiers the whole system was simple and easy to install. We are using the PS15 R2 speakers for the main dance floor & PS8’s for the room fill & RS 18’s for the subs.

“The whole system runs on four amplifiers and with spare channels, and headroom it’s nice to know you have that safety buffer there - we even managed to squeeze in stereo PS10’s as booth monitors. The EQ on the system is running near flat and the system sounds great.

“My main objective with this project was to be cost effective, try and maintain stereo separation where I could, and not have any speakers pointing back on themselves. As this was a new club we had the luxury of doing it right the first time and since the club has been opened I haven’t had to change anything with the audio system.