October 2006
Adlib and Fuzion equip Liverpool Philharmonic with Nexo GEO-D
In a record-breaking time-frame of
just 25 days, ADLIB Audio has designed, delivered and installed
a full sound reinforcement system at one of Liverpool's cultural
landmarks. With the support of Fuzion, the Philharmonic Hall has
been equipped with a NEXO GEO D tangent-array system, the first
in the world to be specified into an installation.
In actual fact, the GEO D system has been designed by ADLIB's
Mark Burnley to be moved in and out of the Hall; it can work as
a stand-alone system or in conjunction with visiting
productions, which may prefer to bring in their own equipment.
Kelsey Acoustics has created a bespoke multicore system to
facilitate this.
Refurbished in 1995 at a cost of over £10 million, the Liverpool
Philharmonic Hall boasts a classic art deco interior. As well as
being home to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, one of
the world's oldest concert-giving organisations, the Hall has an
illustrious tradition of bringing the top names from rock, jazz,
world, classical and contemporary music to Liverpool. The
Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly all appeared here early
on in their careers. More recent appearances have included Fun
Lovin' Criminals, Courtney Pine, Nitin Sawhney, Joan Baez, Willy
Nelson, Tony Bennett, Status Quo and Jamie Cullum.
As a regular supplier of sound reinforcement equipment to the
Philharmonic Hall, ADLIB Audio was an obvious choice to design
and supply a permanent system that would allow the Hall to
handle more production requirements in-house. Many months of
discussions resulted in agreement on a NEXO system, but, at the
eleventh hour, the launch of the new GEO D tangent-array system
proved definitive for the Hall's sound engineers. Despite a long
period of planning, ADLIB Audio had very little time to source
the equipment and complete the installation.
"I genuinely believe that no-one else could have got all the
product in within that time frame," says ADLIB's Andy Dockerty.
"From confirmation by the client to finished installation took
under three and a half weeks, only made possible by a momentous
contribution from Kelsey Acoustics' cable department." His
comments are echoed by installation designer Mark Burnley. "This
was no off-the-shelf solution. All existing cable runs upstairs
were more than 120 metres long, and were unavoidably running
alongside other high voltage cables."
Without the benefit of any CAD drawings for the hall, the ADLIB
team admits that they were "working off the back of beer mats!"
and the installation required a serious amount of potholing to
source the most direct alternative routes from each of the front
of house mixing positions. Compounding the problem was the fact
that the NEXO GEO D system was so newly released; they had to
rely on the expertise of Fuzion engineers Gary Ashton and Jeremy
Hunter to configure the arrays and align them to cover the
Hall's unusual layout, which is characterised by a very large
balcony containing two-thirds of the1800 seats.
"The stalls are very wide, and it is a significant distance from
the stage to the rear of the balcony," says ADLIB's sales
manager, Roger Kirby. "The Hall also has a very high proscenium
arch and the trim heights of the boxes were crucial allowing
even coverage of both the stalls and Balcony which are both very
wide areas. The biggest challenge for the GEO D speaker system
was to cover the stalls smoothly whilst allowing clear
projection to the back of the hall."
The solution was to use left and right arrays of NEXO's new GEO
D10 cabinets, nine boxes per side, flown above a pair of ADLIB's
own AA218HL dual 18" subbass speakers on each side of the stage.
"The Hall used to use NEXO PS10s as the main house PA,"
continues Roger Kirby. "These were originally hidden around the
pros arch handling announcements and even small shows. These
will remain in use as infills for the centre stalls."
Both the Hall's technicians and ADLIB's own engineers are
impressed by the first performances of the NEXO tangent array.
"The D10 hangs look very good, as neat as it is possible for a
flown box to look," says Kirby. "Although it sounds very natural
and smooth on acoustic instruments, it is aggressive enough for
rock 'n' roll, and gets those high-mids through to all parts of
the hall very evenly and uniformly. The only thing the theatre
would have preferred would have been transparent speakers!
However, matching the decor was another solution put forward.
Painting each D10 would prove impractical and mask the fantastic
aesthetics of each cabinet. We're still working on that and
there is a possibility that J&C Joel’s will manufacture
acoustically transparent shrouds for each hang coloured to match
the décor, which we feel will be a much better solution."
The GEO D system is driven by CAMCO Vortex 6 amplifiers, again
supplied by Fuzion, three amps for each nine-cabinet array.
ADLIB also supplied a small Soundcraft GB8 front-of-house mixer
for the Hall, although it is expected that main control systems
will continue to be brought in by visiting artists or sub hired
from ADLIB's continually expanding hire stock.
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