Tantra, Ibiza

It has been there for more than twenty years, which on this strip is close to geological. Hi opened in 2017. Ushuaia in 2011. Space, a short walk away, closed in 2016 after three decades. Through all of it Tantra has kept the same job: a chilled lounge bar by day, and from mid-evening the busiest pre-party in Playa d'en Bossa, with three distinct areas and a crowd that arrives long before the superclubs open their doors.

Being the warm-up room is a harder audio brief than being the main event, for one specific reason. The guests walking into Tantra are on their way to two of the best-sounding rooms on the planet, and many of them have just come from one. They may not be able to name what is wrong with a sound system, but they can absolutely hear when it is not up to standard. That was the bar the installation had to clear.

The physical situation adds to it. Tantra is a low-ceilinged, hard-surfaced venue that opens straight onto a busy street, with traffic, neighbouring venues, promoters and, at peak season, a permanent wall of noise outside. The room fills to capacity. And unlike a purpose-built club, it has to work as a quiet lounge at eight and as something close to a nightclub at one, without a system change in between.

The recent refit shows how seriously that was taken. The ceiling is now a grid of hexagonal timber baffles and preserved moss panels, a treatment that looks like pure design language and is doing real acoustic work in a room that would otherwise be all glass, tile and hard plaster. Neon and LED handle the mood. And above the DJ booth, in plain sight, hang the loudspeakers.

In a room this low the system cannot be hidden, so no attempt was made to hide it. Flown cabinets, angled tight into the dance area, keep the energy on the floor and off the street. A low ceiling is usually a problem. With the right dispersion pattern and the right treatment above it, it becomes an advantage: the room feels close, which is exactly what a warm-up room should feel like.

That controlled dispersion is central to KV2's design approach. Wide, even coverage in the high frequencies with the low-mid energy focused rather than sprayed means, in a small hard room, fewer reflections coming back at the listener and far less of the smeared, shouty quality that makes a busy bar exhausting after an hour. The company's broader priorities, analogue signal integrity, high dynamic range and transducers matched to the electronics driving them, are what allow the system to stay clean when the room is full and the level is up.

Cabinets are flown over the DJ position and around the club area, with separate coverage for the terrace and garden zones.

People used to come to Tantra for the drinks offer and the location. Now they come early and stay longer, because the room sounds like somewhere worth being. Tantra has never tried to be Hi. Its value is precisely that it is not: smaller, cheaper, closer, and open when the big rooms are not. What it now has is a system that does not ask anyone to lower their expectations on the way in.

KV2 Audio System:

• 4x ESD10
• 4x ESD12
• 4x ESD36
• 2x EX10
• 2x ESD1.15
• 2x ESD1.18
• 2x EX1.5
• 4x SAC2