Coastal Source Delivers Audio for Chattanooga ‘Toy Box’ Warehouse

In a first for outdoor audio and lighting company Coastal Source, residential and commercial custom integrator FORTECH has installed a Coastal Source high-performance outdoor sound system within a huge indoor space—a 50×100-foot metal “Toy Box” warehouse with 25-foot ceilings, in Chattanooga, TN. Housing all of the client’s “toys,” including classic cars, a neon golfer sign, and a British phone booth, the unique, spacious, and well-insulated warehouse required not only a powerful yet discrete audio solution, but also an innovative and intelligent approach to design and installation.

“Coastal Source’s outdoor sound systems have never been installed inside a building such as this,” said Jon W. Lancaster, design consultant at FORTECH. “It’s well built and fairly well insulated, really serving its purpose as a climate-controlled environment for the classic cars stored there, but it’s basically a big garage or storage warehouse full of ‘toys’ and would just be a big open space if it were emptied out.”

Chris Cowdrey, president of High-Tech Network, Coastal Source’s southeast sales rep, agreed. “I’ve never seen these products indoors like this before. This is a unique installation; the first time—as far as I’m aware—that Coastal Source outdoor audio has been utilized within a building of this kind. It was an exciting and challenging project, and the FORTECH team was the ideal choice to deliver it!”

The Toy Box client, who FORTECH has worked with on previous projects, wanted to be able to pipe audio from his high-definition television around the warehouse—particularly golf competition coverage—alongside Bluetooth audio streaming feeds, so that he, according to Lancaster, could “shake the dust off the rafters.”

The FORTECH team recognized that this was a tricky installation—a huge space that provided equally huge challenges both in terms of acoustics and filling it with sound. The team brainstormed, considering how they could feasibly move enough air within the 50×100-foot warehouse, specifying Coastal Source, a brand they already knew really well and one that had never let them down.

“We started thinking, If Coastal Source does amazing things outdoors, imagine what it can do in here,” Lancaster said. “The main reason I chose Coastal Source really came down to performance and quality. In my mind, if you have a building with a Lamborghini Huracan, a Porsche 356 Roadster, a Pontiac Firebird Bandit, a Chevelle SS, and a Ford Mustang Bullitt, you are surrounded by high-performance, so to install anything less than the best betrays the spirit of the building.”

Once FORTECH thought of using Coastal Source audio, any other options fell by the wayside. It simply had to be Coastal Source’s high-performance, robust, audio solutions; nothing else would do.

“The client has always appreciated quality, and anything we can do to insulate ourselves, and him, from failures related to poor workmanship in products, is a good thing,” Lancaster continued. “So, as I have before when working with him on previous projects, I chose higher-end equipment—possibly higher than needed—to effectively give us ‘headroom’. The idea is that he’ll never push the gear beyond its normal capabilities, but since Coastal Source solutions are ‘overbuilt,’ even if the client does push it, it won’t fail.”

To deliver the powerful audio experience that the client required, Lancaster specified eight Coastal Source RZ220 3-Way Razor loudspeakers in a white finish, with custom-designed, engineered, and optimized ultra-shallow drivers, providing incredible audio performance from a slim enclosure, as well as two Coastal Source 18.0 Bollard subwoofers.

The Razor loudspeakers are driven by a Coastal Source CRS 2800W 4ch Rack Mounted Amplifier, with a CRS 1400W 4ch Channel Rack Mounted Amplifier, driving the two subwoofers. A Control 4 system serves as “the brains of the operation,” with numerous built-in streaming services for audio sources.

Once they’d settled on the loudspeakers and amplifiers, Lancaster and the FORTECH team decided that the best way to utilize the space, both for the best audio delivery and also for the most discrete installation, was to hang the loudspeakers from the warehouse ceiling with custom-made brackets.

The biggest challenge, in terms of audio performance, was choosing the most effective height for the ceiling drop, to ensure that the 110-degree cone dispersion of each Razor loudspeaker overlapped with one another for the ultimate sound distribution, and so that the audio field wasn’t compromised by downlights, air conditioning vents or any of the client’s “toys.” This involved a great deal of trial and error, with a FORTECH technician making adjustments on a scissor lift for two days.

“We hung them up, and looked at the heights initially,” Lancaster said. “Our design team helped with the dispersion of the loudspeakers, and we flew them at a height that allowed them to overlap each other really nicely. There are no hot spots anywhere in this building now. You walk around; it sounds the same. Dust absolutely falls from the rafters!”

“But it wasn’t just about audio performance. Appearance was really important too. We didn’t want them to be that obvious, and when you look at images of the installation, although you can see the lighting, you don’t really notice the loudspeakers or the subs, which we hid behind the neon golfer sign, positioned on a custom-built shelf, and this worked phenomenally well.”

To dampen any potential vibration from the neon golfer, the FORTECH team decoupled it from the wall and fixed Neoprene foam to its rear. They also used Dynamat and Neoprene on the base of the shelf, to “decouple” the subwoofers from their base as much as possible so that they “float in the air.” As the subwoofers themselves produce very little resonant frequency, FORTECH’s job was made a great deal easier.

“The subwoofers are two or three feet away from the steel girder that holds the building together, but it’s not resonating at all,” Lancaster said. “It does not echo—pretty amazing when you consider the build. The ‘toys’ within the building are also doing a great job of catching some of the resonating sound. We explained to the client that we would do our very best to fill the space with sound but cautioned him that as it’s effectively a big metal box, it wasn’t going to be easy. Thankfully, Coastal Source’s Razor speakers put the sound exactly where it needs to be. It’s not vibrating backwards. It’s not shooting sideways. It moves forward.”

The installation also required creative thinking when it came to the cabling, but FORTECH used this to their advantage, running heavy-duty cables down the existing rafters, and using them as additional support for the Razor loudspeakers—not that this was required, as the bracketing is first rate.

“This was an exceptionally creative project,” said High-Tech Network’s Chris Cowdrey. “It sounds and looks amazing. I’ve seen countless Coastal Source projects, and they’re all extraordinary in their own unique way, but they’re usually outdoors. Even the team at Coastal Source was scratching their heads a little bit about how this would work out, but I can tell you the execution of it is phenomenal.”

Lancaster added: “It’s very rare that technicians want to go back to a job site, just to listen to it, but at Toy Box, everybody has. I’ve also caught the client demo-ing it to about half a dozen people so far. It’s a good feeling to know he’s showing it off on his own.

“It truly sounds phenomenal. The client can turn it up as loud as he wants. If you’ve ever been to an indoor concert and you stepped outside, that’s what it sounds like going to the parking lot here; you can still feel the bass in your chest from inside. Coastal Source helped us put together a phenomenal system, and there’s a lot of pride for our company with this one.”

The last word goes to Nicholas Clark, owner of FORTECH: “A lot of people say they want the best thing until they get the price, but [our client] appreciated the physical quality of the components from Coastal Source. He’s not an easy guy to impress, but he was blown away.”

Please note that Coastal Source does not offer a hanging mount installation for Razor loudspeakers outdoors at this time.  

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