Project Team

av: Noisebox

Saturday January 29th saw the official gala opening of Victory Motorcycles long awaited Sydney dealership, located at Parramatta Road, Ashfield. The 1200 square metre showroom has wings for all variants in the cruiser and touring model range, huge accessory display areas, and designated customer areas including delivery bays, coffee bar and a high-tech multimedia area with interactive features such as iPads.

The Victory showroom is a unique retail destination complete with a high tech audio visual system designed and installed by Noisebox. Managing director John McCauley was briefed by the client to not only replicate a similar environment that was created in Melbourne but to make significant advances in user accessibility and change some of the dysfunctional elements.

Electro-Voice ZX1

ZX1 is a high-performance, compact loudspeaker with a lightweight, durable, high-tech enclosure engineered to provide maximum rigidity and acoustic performance.

Bosch


“The Sydney showroom is a lot more open with a 50 metre frontage, a 30 metre depth and a 6.5 metre raked ceiling,” explained John. “The centre focal point of the space is a large video wall comprising of sixteen NEC X46UN1 screens in a 4 x 4 wall configuration, the NEC panels feature a very small bezel between each screen which is perfect for this view experience. They wanted to show in-house information about the motorcycles plus promotional movies and free to air programs.”

In front of the video wall is a large raised platform similar to a stage that incorporates a lounge area for customers to talk to the sales consultants in a relaxed setting. Given the amount of customization that is available to the purchasers the sales process can take a considerable time to complete. IPads are available to the sales staff to reinforce the sales process; it’s all part of the presentation of the Brand to this tech-savvy consumer demographic. In addition to the stage screens the side accessory areas are visually serviced by two Panasonic 65” commercial plasma screens.

The showroom features six raised motorized turntables 6 metres in diameter, each of which houses different motorcycles which slowly rotate. Above each turntable is a custom-made aluminium circular truss by Design Quintessence, within each truss assembly are several metal halide flood lights as well as four Pro Shop LED PAR64 cans to illuminate the bikes and change colour to suit the bike on display.

During the day all the lights are on with the metal halide flood lights highlighting the bikes and picking up the chrome elements whilst at night they are turned off and the LED PAR64’s highlight the stock.

”After 25 years creating retail environments this is one of the most visually dynamic that I have been involved with,” John notes. “The client didn’t want a light show per se - they wanted to be able to pick a static sympathetic colour using the LEDs to highlight the best elements of the bike. Victory was so impressed with the day/night ambience that they asked us to add another half circle truss over the stage area complete with four more Pro Shop LED PAR64.”

In the middle of the showroom is a circular service counter above which is another circular truss for loudspeakers. The show room is a reflective, hard surfaced area with a polished concrete floor and glass frontage resulting in a harsh acoustic environment.

“We decided a centre cluster speaker system would be best and we’ve used eight Electro Voice ZX1 speakers mounted to the 2.5 metre truss,” said John. “It works really well. The client was concerned that the volume would be too loud at the service counter but we’ve mounted the speakers 4.5 metres above it and directed the speakers into the sales floor so that the sound radiates outwards.”

In addition there is a pair of Electro Voice ZX1 fill speakers for the video wall, put into use when there is something like a product demonstration with an audience on the stage.

“It wasn’t meant to be a big powerful sound system rather a system to provide an even coverage of ambient music and good speech reinforcement,” said John. “By installing a centre cluster configuration there, we were able to limit the amount of reflections that would have occurred if we’d done multi-source speaker placement. We also eliminated the need to have a time-aligning mechanism within the sound system. The centre cluster really was the most logical way to achieve high intelligibility without a very expensive control system.”

There are plenty of hands on stuff for the browsers including an interactive touchscreen kiosk that provides an audio experience; touch the screen on an exhaust pipe type and you are rumbled by the experience.

“We used an all in one PC connected to a Jamo powered sub woofer and cube speakers,” explained John. “Those petrol-heads are doing summersaults over that bit of kit!”

Pro Shop LED PAR 64

The LED PAR 64 is a short PAR 64 fixture that allows you to create almost limitless colour possibilities with amazing output. The compact and lightweight housing means that it is ideal for simple colour wash of stage and truss warming applications.

Show Technology


Overall the elements of the AV system are meant to offer a sophistication that is synonymous with the Victory Brand, putting the tricks of the system on display for the customers to see creates dialogue and allows the staff to engage on a common level.

“The AMX controls everything – the video wall (including the on/off functions, signal source and the matrix configuration), audio inputs including an iPod dock located in the rack, LED lighting including colour selection and even the actual direction of the rotating carousel,” commented John. “The AMX integration tool was a very important component of allowing the staff access to all of the technology within the space in a really simple way. They all love it and haven’t stopped talking about it, that’s the sort of customer satisfaction that you can build a reputation on.”

Victory Motorcycles is open 7 days a week and offers test drives on their machines.