Casa de Campo ResidenceCase Study

From the Patio to the Home, Delivering Live Entertainment with AtlasIED Atmosphere

The Casa de Campo Resort and Villas located in La Romana on the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic is the country’s most exclusive and luxurious resort. The 7,000-acre hotel, resort, and residential community features three golf courses, multiple restaurants and pools, a nightclub, and a movie theater. While visitors of the resort can book suites or villas for short stays, the private villas also attract people who want to call the resort home.

One particular residence holds the distinction as one of the largest on the property at 43,000 square feet, and the homeowners turned to AtlasIED to address a critical gap in their home’s audio system.

Situated along the resort’s Teeth of the Dog golf course, which Golf Magazine voted as the top golf course layout in Latin America, the 8-bedroom home features ocean views and a large outdoor infinity pool for lounging. Music was an essential consideration in the home’s design as the homeowners are passionate about music. When guests arrive at the home, they want them to hear music wherever they are on the property, including hallways, the indoor garden, the bedrooms and even the outdoor patios.

A key challenge identified during construction was the homeowner’s desire to entertain people around the spacious outdoor pool to take advantage of the views. With the expectation that live musicians including orchestras, bands, singers, or DJs would provide entertainment for family gatherings and hosted parties, the homeowners also wanted the ability to play the music from these live entertainers from the pool area throughout the home’s audio system. For Fernando Hernandez, the Chief Technology Officer of Musitempo and the AV integrator on the project, this scenario created a dilemma.

“In our years in business, connecting an external audio system in a residential home to a central audio system has been a consistent challenge,” said Hernandez. “This generally creates issues due to inconsistent audio standards and even power.”

Musitempo is a leading AV integration company in the Dominican Republic with over 20 years in the market, specializing in the design, installation, programming and automation of both commercial and residential audio systems. For this challenge, Voigt turned to his commercial product portfolio and selected AtlasIED Atmosphere to address this specialized need.

Oftentimes businesses and especially residential homes unaccustomed to hosting live music do not have the appropriate audio infrastructure to support the needs of professional-grade audio. After some discussions with the home designer, Hernandez selected AtlasIED to ensure sub-par audio was never an issue at a home that was purpose-built for entertaining.

Hernandez and his team wanted to provide a solution that any audio engineer would recognize and feel comfortable connecting to, and chose to install Atmosphere A-XLR remote audio inputs at two key locations around the pool intended for the musical talent. Hernandez then installed an Atmosphere AZM4 four-zone audio processor in the home’s audio system hardware rack. The A-XLRs are designed to work on cable runs up to 1,000 feet from the AZM4, and the installers ran Cat6 cables from the inputs underground from two locations to the rack.

The AZM4 is a commercial-grade digital signal processor (DSP) combined with innovative algorithms to offer custom solutions for a wide variety of spaces. Including a built-in message player, room combiner and event scheduler, among other features, the AZM is a processing powerhouse for automated audio system control. The AZM4 integrates seamlessly with the home’s Control4 residential home automation system and allows the homeowners to play audio from the performers from the outdoor areas, inside the home.The AZM4 can connect up to 16 Atmosphere accessories such as the AtlasIED A-BT Bluetooth audio inputs or volume controllers, providing room for expandability in the future.

“The only brand and solution that we came across that made sense and that we were aware of that had the performance and durability was AtlasIED’s Atmosphere platform,” said Hernandez. “An audio engineer is not going to hook up an audio mixer to an RCA-based input — they won’t risk it. Now any audio engineer is instantly comfortable when they arrive at the home for setup.”

Since installing AtlasIED at the home, Hernandez has toured the property with several other clients to show how Atmosphere solved the problem of bringing outdoor audio indoors. “Atmosphere was a home run for the customer, who has used it now continually since moving into the home,” added Hernandez. According to Hernandez, Atmosphere is now the go-to solution with his customers in the region who are seeking a similar experience.