The club is a two-time NightStalker Award winner.

Clubs in New York don’t tend to stick around for five years. And they rarely stay cool for more than five minutes. In both regards, Sullivan Room is an anomaly.

Since 2002, the little club that could has brought diverse music genres to regulars and newcomers in its underground, unmarked location on the East Village’s Sullivan Street. And its reputation earned the club two Club World Award “People’s Choice” trophies – aka NightStalker Awards – in ’05 and ’07. So, after a minor renovation and sound system enhancement two years ago, what ignited this season’s top-to-bottom redo?

“We bring in very popular DJs from around the world and I wanted to accommodate them first class, and have all these quality DJ components in the booth,” says owner Sergei Sklarenko. “I wanted to be on top of the game.”

The music-focused dungeon of a club – affectionately called Sully by its faithful – was already there. But with New York’s mega-club market on a plateau, and a surge in intimate venues catering to touring DJs, Sklarenko wanted to expand its niche. The renovation was designed to woo big DJs and reward discerning customers (who’ve confirmed the success via blogs, forums and online chatter), plus add a bit of private event panache.

Walls were knocked down to add an extra thousand square feet. The walls were given acoustical treatments inside, and aesthetic ones outside. The notorious bathroom lines were addressed in a major expansion, from two single stalls to full men’s and women’s facilities. The DJ booth essentially doubled in size, as well. And the dark, dank room was treated to a proper lighting installation – both dancefloor and LED.

But the crux of the redesign was undeniably the audio installation. And rather than try to recreate the glorified club systems of New York legends past (like Twilo and the Paradise Garage), Sklarenko wanted to build on the unique identity that Sully had already established for itself.

New Spaces
Where there was little by way of lighting schemes in the old Sullivan Room, the space is now draped in beams from Color Kinetics’ ColorBlast fixtures. The design, created by Michael Meecham of Miami-based idesign (www.idesignproductions.com) highlights the new interior’s textured columns and castle-esque finishes. The light show is controlled via Martin Professional LightJockey.

The once single environment now has a pocket alcove for lounging and private parties. It also features a lofted area across from the bar and DJ booth beyond the dancefloor, which is aurally supplemented with fill speakers.

New murals by local artists bedeck the back wall, but the inconspicuous entrance remains. Entering may feel the same, but there is a noticeable difference upon exiting.

“We look to provide an [audio] experience that is immersive and physical, but you can still hear the birds and the crickets at the end of the night,” says sound system designer Bill Weir, of Charlotte, N.C.-based Core Audio (www.coreaudio.biz). “There’s more to the world that just being loud.”

Partnering with long-time Sully consultant Andrew Russell (now full-time technical director), the Core team tackled the design and installation of the new custom system.

“Things that make techno sound good sometimes don’t make house sound good,” says Weir. “We designed a very flexible system that, in the right hands, can be made to sound appropriate for different kinds of music. We feel it’s better than simply implementing a signal path that sounds the same from night to night.”

Cramped no more: The Sully DJ booth.

"Musical," Not "Wooly"
Sully’s new speakers, all custom built by Core, use special compression drivers fabricated from a polymer rather than titanium. The result is more “liquid and smooth,” says Weir, and allows for pumping out high SPLs without a metallic breakup.

“It’s a small room,” Weir says. “So we designed a small aperture horn because a large horn in a small room will produce uneven bass response. Small will penetrate the crowd no matter how dense it gets.”

The low end comes from two different types of custom subwoofers, each with its own characteristic sound.

The sub-bass enclosures employ aluminum-coned Aura Sound 18" woofers, and the bass and mid-bass boxes use Beyma 12" woofers. The bass boxes are in quasi horn-bandpass enclosures; and the mid-bass boxes each house four of the woofers, which are frequency-shaded with two drivers carrying the midrange and all four carrying the mid-bass.

“The sealed bass enclosures are extremely tight and extremely musical, but they’re not wooly like in big clubs,” Weir says. The flexibility allows for, say, a softer and rounder sound on house nights, and more flinty punch for drum ‘n’ bass nights.

“The bass ones are aggressive; deep and round and smooth,” says Weir. “You can vary the balance between them, and you can also vary the warmth out of the Fatso.” Weir spec-ed the Emperical Labs FATSO, a two-channel analog audio processor, to add a layer of distortion to the sound with mild compression. And though he falls on the die-hard analog side of the old debate, he opted for the digital Dolby Lake Processor, too. The box offered theoretically perfect crossovers, and sustained the sound quality he desired.

“The point of a dance music system is not to be accurate,” Weir adds. “It’s to feel good.”

Digital to analog conversion from the Pioneer CD decks is provided by two Lucid Technologies DA9624 converters, which, Weir adds, were well worth the cost for the “profound difference” they make.

For the Technics turntables, Hagerman vacuum tube preamps use a constant current and passive RIAA EQ, and avoid a “too round” sound with a unique design. “The records sound like they’re jumping out of the speakers at you; everything is three-dimensional.” Weir says. “The preamps, honestly, make as much of a difference as the rest of the system.”

Powersoft’s efficient K Series amps save both rack space and power.

“It seems like most nightclubs are still using the formula from the Paradise Garage, like there’s this New York sound,” Weir says. “Sullivan wanted to have its own identity; they didn’t want to just sound like everyone else.”

“A sound system in a room is very much like an acoustic guitar. You play the strings, but they’re actually coupled with the body. The speakers are like the strings, and the room is like the body of the guitar. You have to design that just right so the system loves the room.”

www.sullivanroom.com

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