Drink Up, Listen Up
For the last 70 years, Maker’s Mark Distillery in Loretto, KY, has been producing whisky. Its 1,300-acre Star Hill Farm features 30 buildings housing production, bottling, and warehouse facilities, as well as an Innovation Lab and the Home Place Visitor Center, the latter of which serves as the starting and end point for guided tours. As part of a major renovation, Maker’s Mark recently enlisted local AV design and integration firm JCA Media to upgrade its AV systems across its campus.
First on the list was the employee breakroom, which required distributed audio as well as video for both internal messaging and presentation. JCA outfitted this space an Allen & Heath AHM-32 audio matrix processor integrated with eight Martin ceiling speakers, which are driven by a LEA Connect Series 704 amplifier. There are also three NEC commercial displays, one 98-inch and two 65-inch screens.
Switching is achieved through a Kramer presentation switcher, and an RTI KX7 touchpanel provides control. “Using the touchpanel, users can choose between different audio sources on the AHM and control what shows on the large screens,” explained Alex Peake, project manager at JCA. “It’s simple but flexible.”
The breakroom deployment expanded to the nearby bottling lines, above which JCA integrated Technomad speakers, also driven by the LEA amp and controlled by the RTI interface. “We did a little bit of aiming for directivity to make sure that the people on bottling would hear and the visitors walking through don’t get blasted with music,” Peake explained.
From there, JCA moved on to the Innovation Lab, where whisky makers formulate new products based on the producer’s classic bourbon recipe. The building features eight separate audio zones, with an Allen & Heath AHM processor distributing sound to the lab itself, plus a conference room, VIP tasting room, outdoor patio, kitchen, restroom, and two offices. A main RTI KX7 touchpanel provides control throughout, with two smaller touchscreens located in each office.
Keeping Tours on Track
At the heart of the renovation was the Home Place Visitor Center, which includes a main gallery, check-in area, cocktail bar, and a sitting room. Outside visitors may stroll through the Culinary Garden, a pergola, or gather on a patio.
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Joe Riggs, senior manager of engineering operations at Maker’s Mark, explained that audio quality throughout these spaces was a top priority. Because many people arrive before their guided tours—and therefore use this time to do some initial exploring on their own—it was also necessary for them to hear announcements throughout Home Place.
“Our visitor center is the first thing people experience at the distillery, so we want our guests to feel welcome and have music playing,” Riggs said. “They might be drinking in the bar or sitting on the patio, so being able to announce those tours no matter where the guests are and getting them where they need to be on time is important.”
Peake highlighted the need for delivering high-quality audio while respecting the building’s architectural and design elements. “[Home Place needed] audiophile-quality sound, the equipment needed to disappear aesthetically, and the control needed to be simple to operate yet extremely flexible,” he said. The system is used for music playback and announcements; staff members also have access to four roaming microphones that can be fed into the system when necessary.
For Home Place, JCA selected speakers by Danley Sound Labs to fulfill both audio quality and aesthetic requirements—there are 48 positioned throughout the facility, including in every restroom stall. “One of the issues with the visitors center was that these were very small spaces. We needed something we could make disappear while also having all the headroom we needed and crystal-clear audio,” Peake said.
He recalled that his team worked with the loudspeaker manufacturer to custom paint the cabinets to match the Maker’s Mark color palette. “We have about 17 Danley Cube speakers around the outside of the house that are [painted] a specific Maker’s Mark brown," he added. "That can only be found here.”
Audio distribution for Home Place required a larger processor, and JCA selected the Allen & Heath AHM-64. An 11-inch RTI KA11 touchpanel serves as the main control interface that displays a blueprint of the interior and exterior zones. “[Users] can easily select a room, then choose what it’s listening to and mix in different sources like the wireless mic or music playback or the level of the tour announcement audio,” Peake explained.
JCA also programmed music playback presets for each room that allow announcements to take priority. Additional presets let users turn the music off when the wireless mics are in use, and a "Do Not Disturb" feature prevents announcements from being heard in selected spaces when VIP tours are in progress. In addition to the KA11, RTI touchpanels positioned in the cocktail bar and check-in desk enable staff at these locations to recall presets as well.
Cocktail Bar Challenges
One of the challenges JCA faced was providing intelligibility in the cocktail bar and gallery. The high glass ceilings, combined with materials like plaster, tile, and hardwood floors, presented a number of reflective surfaces that would make it difficult for people to hear announcements when large groups were in the spaces.
To address this, JCA activated the AHM-64’s Ambient Noise Compensation function, which works in conjunction with hidden boundary microphones that are fitted into the ceiling. These mics “listen” to the room and increase or decrease the master volumes in these spaces, based on their occupancy at any given time.
“If 50 people walk into the gallery, the announcements and music levels will gradually rise with the noise in the room,” Peake said. “As the group leaves, it slowly rolls back down.” JCA also outfitted the cocktail bar with acoustic treatments—again, custom-painted according to the Maker’s Mark color palette—to reduce reflections in this area.
Maker’s Mark is continuing to perform renovations and make AV upgrades across its campus. One end goal is the ability to provide communication and paging between its buildings. This scalability is why JCA selected Allen & Heath’s AHM platform. “It’s very much going to be a connected distillery from building to building,” Peake said. “That is the ultimate end game that we’ve kept in mind as we’ve built these systems.”
This level of connectivity—and even that which already exists in each of the revamped buildings—requires communication between the AV and IT teams, Riggs noted. “JCA has worked phenomenally with our corporate IT department,” he said. “Any time we do a connected conference room IT is always involved, and Alex and his team are more than willing to jump on Teams calls with that team to discuss the details.”
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Peake, a fan of Disney, drew inspiration from what he’s observed at the entertainment behemoth’s amusement parks when thinking about how AV can contribute to creating an experience at Maker’s Mark. “We wanted audio everywhere,” he said. “At Disney, everywhere you go you hear something that is keeping you in that area, keeping you in that feeling. That’s what we wanted for Maker’s: to use audio to help that experience continue throughout the visit.”
