Hi Fi Brisbane
125 Boundary St,
West End QLD 4101
1300THEHIFI
www.thehifi.com.au

Melbourne’s iconic live music venue, The Hi-Fi, has bought its highly regarded live music brand to the Brisbane scene with the opening of a state-of-the-art Hi Fi in West End.

The Hi-Fi Group has owned and operated the legendary Melbourne CBD venue, The Hi-Fi, for over 11 years and has established the venue as the stand-out leader in local and international headline music events in Melbourne.

The Hi-Fi Group chose to locate their Brisbane venue in the West End precinct because of the proximity to the CBD, availability of public transport and the fact West End is a rapidly developing area with a strong cultural fit to Brisbane’s 18-35 market.

The purpose built Brisbane venue includes a main room on ground level and a mezzanine section. The development includes a unique stand-alone bar on Boundary Street West End, aptly named Vinyl. Vinyl has been brought to life in partnership with Jim Beam, and is the first brand experience-integrated bar of its kind in Brisbane.

Vinyl also has cutting-edge connectivity to the main 1200 person venue. This integration enables high quality, live video and audio feeds from the main venue to be broadcast on two projector screens in Vinyl, on an on-demand basis.

Johnston Audio Services has had a sound system in Melbourne’s Hi Fi Bar for several years and so they were asked to supply the new Hi Fi Bar.

"The Hi Fi brand is that they want to have the same sound system in all their venues,” explained Bruce Johnston, managing director of Johnston Audio
Services. “I guess the PA was set in stone as we

recently sold the Hi Fi Melbourne an Outline Butterfly PA system and so we replicated that in Brisbane which has a similar design room.”

The room may have been similar in layout but Bruce encountered problems with the air conditioning system which made it difficult for him to install a line array PA.

Twelve Outline Butterfly line array speaker boxes and six Outline Subtech 218 subs were installed and according to Bruce, they sound very good!

”The venue holds about 1200 people and so six speakers per side is enough,” said Bruce. “We’ve put a Digidesign Profile Mixrack console out front for mixing because, at the moment, it appears to be the most popular console in hiring and sub-hiring.”

Whilst the Digidesign console houses most effects a Klark Teknik DN360 system EQ, a Yamaha SPX 990,
a SDE 330 Space Delay and two DBX 160a system comps are provided.

Lab Gruppen 6400 amplifiers drive the system.There’s a Midas Sienna console for monitors and a TC Electronics Motor Fade System EQ. Eight Wayloud
Active monitor wedges, a JBL R3 drum fill and two EAW 650 side fills are onstage, all driven by Quest MA3000 amplifiers. Microphones are all by Shure.

A basic lighting system was installed consisting of six Robe 250 moving heads, thirty-two par cans, two LSCe-pro digital dimmers and a Jands Hog 1000 for control.

”We’ve had some great reports from people saying how good it sounds,” commented Bruce.