El Club is one of Detroit’s premiere live-music venues.

Developing an ideal listening experience for loud music in a relatively small, shoe-box shaped environment, in which a tightly-packed audience contributes a significant amount of additional sound to the experience, poses unique challenges for managing acoustic energy. The sound of the performers must be enveloping, saturating, and penetrating, but also clear and audible over the sounds of the audience. 

The underlying concrete structure of the space is inherently bass-retaining. Umbel developed an acoustic design that balances the bass-retaining qualities of the room with deep Basotect G foam wedges. The wedges increase in density near the ceiling/wall intersection, where they are most efficient at capturing the low frequency energy that would otherwise propagate unchecked in a rectilinear environment, distorting and muddying the listening experience. The foam wedges used in the El Club were reclaimed from Anri Sala’s Answer Me, which showed at the New Museum in NYC in 2016.

El Club was named one of Rolling Stone’s Ten Best Live Music Venues in America in 2018 and Best Rock Club 4 years in a row by Best of Detroit.

Location Detroit, MI

Architects LAAVU

Audio system d&b audiotechnik

Photography Alexandre da Viega