KV2 Shores up Sound on floating Prague Night Club

1989 saw the Altenburg’s final passage through the Iron Curtain and in February 2017 three study buddies - businessman Jan Al Amel, journalist and urban cycling activist Martin Kontra and film director Benjamin Tuček - captured it on the way to the scrap yard and decided to give it a new lease of life.

250 tonnes of vessel was transformed into a unique entertainment space with dance floor and stage for use as a nightclub, live music venue or as a platform for meetings on one of Prague’s unmarked banks at the Troja Bridge. Here it has a temporary home for the next couple of years and the fully navigable Club has the ability to move further along with planned development.

Due to the ship’s design, construction and existing interior space it was not necessary to solve complex layouts, and the renovation was fully focused on functionality, serviceability and accessibility. The Club has a capacity of up to 400, with outdoor seating and a bar that can serve up to 1,200 people from Spring to Autumn.

An significant milestone in the redevelopment was the choice of a Sound System that befitted the scale of the project and that could comfortably deal with the relatively complex acoustics.

"The uniqueness of this space and our vision for a multi-genre club were factors in finding the right audio solution." remembers Vojtěch Loskot, Producer Altenburg 1964. “We have been in the Prague scene for a long time and we could not escape the growing reputation and especially the quality of domestic professional audio manufacturers KV2 Audio. This lead us to address KV2’s Czech representatives WildtAudio.” 

Acoustic evaluations were undertaken by Pavel Hořák who managed to reduce reverberation time at mid and high frequencies down from three seconds to a perfectly comfortable half a second and plans are also in place to deploy bass traps in the upcoming season break.

"We have offered the club the optimum solution in the form of  KV2 Audio’s proven ESR215 with eight ES1.8 subwoofers and a pair of delayed EX12’s for resonance," says Jakub Suchomel of WildtAudio. "This system has a very wide range of uses. It can be applied to a variety of musical performances from Electronic to Live Music guitar-driven acts and also used without any problems for Theatre plays (as guest Theatre stage of MeetFactory) or spoken word," adds Suchomel.

"This year's first season was extremely successful and our floating club welcomed a lot of attractive artists such as acclaimed Jazz artist Shigeto, Hardcore legends Tragedy, King Dylan Carlson's slow guitar drone and many other DJs and Producers such as Valentino Mora, Mama Snake, Coni, Roxymore. Our goal is to connect unconventional genres and revive the beautiful place where we are anchored“ adds Vojtěch Roskot.

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KV2 Audio setup:

• 2x ESR215
• 1x ESR3000
• 8x ES1.8
• 2x VHD3200
• 2x EX12

Foto: Petr Zikmund, Jan Rozsypal