Written by James Ling

Danny McDonald is one of New York City’s best-known restauranteurs. For nearly 30 years, he has built his reputation on the development, construction and operation of modern pubs, bars, and taverns. Every venue he creates combines excellent food and drink with the best possible environment to enjoy them in. Key to this has been the emphasis he always places on a high-quality audio system.

This philosophy has remained with the latest McDonald venue to open, The Bar. Located in Moynihan Train Hall in the newly renovated Penn Station below the Beaux Arts-designed James A. Farley Post Office Building, the elegant venue furnished in dark walnut and polished brass, is the centrepiece of the Hall’s new food court. The sound system here, as with McDonald’s other venues, relies on loudspeakers from Genelec, which must be supported by other high-quality components to ensure the space sounds as good as it can.

Osbee Industries Inc. was brought onboard to handle the design of the system. With the speaker brand already set, the company wanted to add DSP to ensure the space would sound as good as it possibly could while giving the owner the studio-quality feel that he expected. “The speakers are in the ceiling tucked away from view, and there were requirements for aesthetics and things like that,” said Dave Raines, President of Osbee. “We really knew that it just wasn’t going to sound as good as it could, so we put in some DSP to make it really sound good.” For the Osbee team, there was only one choice when it came to the right DSP for The Bar. “We’ve been using Symetrix equipment for a long time and we wanted to use it on this project,” stated Dave. “Almost every project we’re starting to do now we’re starting to use Symetrix equipment for switching and DSP. We like the way we can DSP everything and the switching is very easy. Even if we are doing patch through with Sonos, even if we are just coming in and DSP out to an amp for Sonos, we will use Symetrix. It is just easy to use. It’s a useful tool in our toolkit now.”

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