Timber Flooring: Western Australian Sheok
Timber Wine Racks: Western Australian Yellow Stringybark
Timber Bar Front: Western Australian Sheok
Bar Top: White Carrera Marble
All timber supplied by Inglewood Products Group
Central Pendant Light: Hub Furniture

Must
107 Bussell Highway
Margaret River WA 6285
08 9758 8877
www.must.com.au

The clients purchased the rights to two neighbouring but separate buildings in the main street of Margaret River, Western Australia. Each building housed separate hospitality venues each with their own facilities. The larger building was constructed in 1998 and the smaller very narrow building, with an internal floor width of less than 3m, was constructed in 2005.

The client's operate a successful restaurant in Perth and the new venture was required to be the wine region edition of the city venue.

The very specific design criteria was to complete a new bar and fine dining restaurant including:
• amalgamation of two separate buildings into one workable hospitality space
• rationalisation of existing facilities to suit single larger premises
• enclosure of previous open front al fresco area
• provision of a separate bar area
• provision of a closable private dining area

The completed venue was required to present as:
• shared, but differentiated identity with the city premises
• suitable to the location and environment at the centre of the Margaret River wine region
• distinctive, elegant, comfortable, smart and unpretentious
• appropriate to it's setting and offerings

Distinctively, the owners have proposed a unique service to represent all local wine producers and make available all local wine labels within the restaurant.

This strong wine message was to be unambiguously reflected in the ambience of the interior space.

In a region filled with quality wineries and restaurants, Must Margaret River was to be a distinctive, quality venue showcasing a commitment to local food & local wine.

Audio
Following a successful venue audio upgrade and recent completion of the new Champagne Lounge (reviewed last year in Venue) Perth’s Must Wine Bar approached Mark Jeisman from Surround Custom again to deliver audio requirements for their new Margaret River venture.

Limited by both budget and timeline constraints as is often the case with many venues, Surround Custom delivered a system design and audio cable to site (some 3.5 hours from Perth) within 24 hours of the initial request. ‘The builder was pushing ahead with drywall and ceilings, so there really wasn’t much time at all to get cabling in’.

With experience based on the previous clientele of the Perth based Must Wine Bar, Mark’s brief was to fill the venue though allow flexibility when it came to zone controlling, positioning of speakers, and cater for a variety of music source possibilities. It had to be able to deal with the lunchtime crowd and adapt through to the evening dining atmosphere. Though the vibe is slightly more laidback in that ‘down south’ way, it was important to create the required headroom should more demands be placed on the audio system.

Whilst the venue is effectively ‘open plan’ is does segregate itself into areas utilizing floor to ceiling custom wine racks made from stringy bark timber. There is also a lounge niche section just off the main bar area which backs onto the wider seating space. A ‘communal monk style’ central dining table takes pride of place in the middle of the venue. For functions, a private dining room sits at the front of the venue.

Mark’s recommendation’s included the popular Turbosound Impact 55T series of satellite speakers combined with the matched TSB 110 subwoofer system. They work beautifully under varied conditions, look and sound great and can cop a hammering whilst still sounding lush. Limited space meant the speakers had to be compact and surface mounted. They are fixed to thick industrial steel ‘eye columns’ and co-director Brad Harding points out half the installation time was drilling the steel ! (the local hardware did a roaring trade that day in 8mm drill bits!) The exposed cabling to the speakers on the bright steel column was concealed with locally sourced silver aluminum tubing.

The Turbosound subwoofer was flushed into the walls, venting into the venue space. A second subwoofer destined for the bar area was deleted due to space constrictions; however the main sub handles the venue surprisingly well overall.

Minor restroom areas were covered with 8” round flush mount speakers.

Australia Monitor Synergy multichannel amplifiers provided an economical but powerful solution and at the same time saved a huge amount of space which was critical.

The difficulty was that we effectively had to reverse engineer the system to cater for the size and space of subwoofers and the ultimate location for speakers etc, however the builder and experienced venue owner Gary Gosatti were very accommodating in what we had to do understanding the time line.

A central rack location houses all electronics near the till for access.

Rane’s unique line splitter / mixer provides a handy manual zone controller allowing the staff in the venue to alter volume across the various areas to suit as crowd numbers vary.

Currently the venue runs as ‘one zone’ meaning that only one music source will feed all areas at the same time. The only exception is the office area which can either have the option of monitoring what is happening downstairs or you can separate the office and use the office area to preview, make playlists or adjust music forthcoming. The music system is very simply controlled via the desktop PC in the office, so that playlists cannot be interfered with.

With respect to music sources on a daily basis, the venue primarily runs the Sonos music system with both on line music services and locally stored server based content providing the tunes.

Being in a rural area there is a stronger possibility of service provider downtime, so in case of internet or local LAN network failure, a multi disc CD player is on standby as is an I-pod dock in the rack. There is also a local DJ input and microphone inputs located near the bar should the need arise with special events.