Panama

As Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) approached in late 2016, the team at Panama decided they wanted a new sound in the club’s 900-capacity main room. ADE is the world’s leading conference, festival and cultural playground for electronic music and Panama holds many of its most important events.

“We’d had our previous sound system for four or five years and it was still working well, but we knew it could be better,” explains Lassche. “For starters, we were missing some bass and we wanted the music to be more focused on the dance floor but still sound good in the bar areas and on the balconies.” A number of audio brands were invited to demo systems at the club, but none of them hit the mark. Having been impressed by Pioneer Pro Audio’s systems at Booom and Sankeys in Ibiza, Café D’Anvers in Belgium and Magdalena in Berlin, Lassche asked a few of his industry friends for their opinions on the brand. “It’s super important for me that artists want to come to Panama because they like playing on the sound system,” he explains. “I spoke with a lot of different artists and I heard Pioneer’s name many times.” Consequently, the Panama team bought their Pioneer Pro Audio system without requesting a demo. But it was clear that the installation wouldn’t be such a breeze. Although the century-old former power station occupied by the club has a charming history – it’s one of many structures in the Zeeburg district named after the far-flung corners of the world that once sent trade ships there – it’s awkwardly shaped and is protected from being modified with damping material or even by fixing speaker brackets to the walls.

“We had to make the system work for all kinds of musical styles and even business events, but there were so many variables in the acoustic space,” explains Pioneer Pro Audio Manager Alex Barrand. To tackle the installation Pioneer Pro Audio collaborated with local company Discovery Sound and Vision, whose Owner, Wim Kuin, recognised the same challenges. “The room is surrounded by balconies with a lot of space underneath where you have to try and get even coverage. The roof is about 20 metres high and is really thin so it creates unwanted reflections.”

On the finished system, Panama’s Manager Lassche says, “It looks impressive. When you walk in and see those stacks it really makes you pay attention.” Describing the sound, he continues, “It’s warm and powerful but I think it has an edgy bass to it, and that’s special. It’s rawer and sounds more underground than other systems, which is great for dance music, but it also adjusts really well for different music genres.”

The dance music community has responded well too.
Following the installation of the Pioneer Pro Audio system, Panama has been voted into DJ Mag’s prestigious Top 100 Clubs in the World poll for the first time, and is the second highest ranking Dutch club on the list.

“The system is totally adaptive for different nights at the venue,” says Pioneer Pro Audio’s Barrand. “We invested a lot of time in creating presets to enable the system to respond that way.” Those presets are accessed via custom control panels created by Pioneer Pro Audio in an openarchitecture DSP software from DSS. Now, the Panama sound technician can simply press a button on an iPad each night and have the peace of mind that the system will respond to the genre of music the DJs will play.

Working relationships are incredibly important in the nightclub industry and for Panama’s Manager, Lassche, the experience of collaborating with the Pioneer Pro Audio team reassured him that the club had made the right choice. “With Pioneer, we weren’t just buying a sound system. We’ve got a partnership now, which is exactly what we wanted. We know that, as the technology changes, Pioneer Pro Audio can deliver the best sound at Panama, now and in the future.”