What started as a late-night effort between two brothers in 1987 to perfect their mother’s secret recipe turned into Crabfries® and launched their fledgling restaurant, Chickie’s and Pete’s Crab House and Sports Bar, to critical and commercial success. ESPN recently proclaimed the establishment to be the “Number One Sports Bar in North America” and Maxim Magazine deemed it the “Greatest American Neighborhood Bar.” Now a well-established Philadelphia favorite, Chickie’s and Pete’s is expanding its reach and recently opened its 26th location in Atlantic City’s Tropicana Resort & Casino. As with all of the other Chickie’s and Pete’s locations designed and installed by Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based Pro Systems, the new one uses Symetrix audio processing. This time it’s two SymNet Radius 12×8 Dante network audio DSPs paired with two SymNet xIn 12 and two xOut 12 audio I/O expanders for a total I/O count of 48 by 40.

Pro Systems’ Rich Stout and Jim McCann designed, programmed, and installed the new system. “For the Atlantic City location, the client wanted an upscale sports bar feel consistent with their ‘Best Sports Bar’ award from ESPN,” said Stout. “Every Chickie’s and Pete’s location that we have installed has incorporated Symetrix processing, and they’ve always been pleased with the sound quality and ease of use. At Atlantic City, we went with an HDMI 1080p solution with lots of individual audio zones. To accommodate all the inputs and zones, we chose two Radius 12×8 processors paired with two each xIn 12 and xOut 12 breakout boxes. The Radius’ integrated Dante network capacity made it easy, reliable, and inexpensive to route audio from box to box.

In addition to the Symetrix backbone, the system consists of Crown amplifiers feeding JBL Control and AE Series loudspeakers across 39 zones. Two Crestron HDMI DM switchers support 38 by 64 channels of video/audio, and several Crestron V15 touch panels enable end user control of audio, video, and lighting from a variety of strategic locations.

Rich Stout commented, “The client has no idea about the underlying complexity of a system like this nor should they have to. The trick is to make it simple enough that anyone walking up to the Crestron panel can run the entire system. With Symetrix and other premium hardware vendors we achieved that goal at Atlantic City, and it is now one of Chickie’s and Pete’s favorite locations.”