Audio Files (February 2007)

Audio wave

FEATURES

CLUB AUDIO: A BLUFFER'S GUIDE

features, february 2007, COMMENTS

Don’t know your amplifier from your elbow? With a wealth of technology at your finger tips and the ability to police your own sound system more important than ever before, Walter Mirauer offers the uninitiated a whistle stop orientation.

Not long after I first moved to Halifax in 1986, local entrepreneur Chris Deith opened the Coliseum nightclub in the site of a former cinema. One of the archetypal examples of the Themed Venue, and with an integral feeder bar, Main Street, offering a taste of polyglot New Orleans to monoglot, Thatcher-depressed Halifax, the club was an instant success.

Apart from the American street scene in the bar, the club itself was equipped with a Shuttlesound-furnished, EV-based high power sound system, an Avitec motorised lighting rig and a laser. For the time, it was spectacular. Little did I imagine that, some twenty years on, I would be writing about it again, this time in the context of what a club could and maybe should equip itself with if it were starting today.

Because, after a disastrous fire over Christmas, the club is doing just that - with a total refurbishment that will transform it, according to local rumour, into a Liquid nightclub. And no doubt its owners - now Luminar Leisure - will consider a pair of decent turntables (ideally Technics SL1200s) a must-have for the club’s DJ station, just as Deith did a generation before.

I know, it’s ridiculous, and these things should have long been consigned to the dustbin of technological history, there to repose in eternal rest alongside numerous ‘advances’ by Sony, like Betamax, Minidisc, and countless other failed formats. But no, there are still talented ‘turntablists’ out there, unique vinyl is still being produced, and the genre, if moribund, is not dead yet. In a few years time, I might be writing something similar about CD, but I hope not. The digitisation of music has been an absolute boon to mankind in general and to nightclubs in particular. Being able to reproduce dance music at realistic, exciting volume levels without acoustic feedback, hiss or compression/expansion and other undesirable processing has been fantastic. So, second item in the Must Have chain is a couple of decent pro-CD players. Virtually all of these today offer MP3 capability. BEWARE - this is a Bad Thing. Digitally compressed audio formats like MP3 are absolutely fine for personal stereos, iPods, cars and working-class front rooms with squelchy carpets, but they are no use for performance environments. It’s like taking roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, proper gravy, spuds and veg, whacking it through a blender and squeezing it out like toothpaste. Not even an option on an Apollo mission.

Still in the DJ booth, next up for consideration is the mixer. But I’m going to duck this one at this point because this is the real point of decision in terms of what a modern club system should be, or become. Essentially, that choice is between a system which is at heart ‘smart’ - by which I mean digital and even remotely controllable - and something which is purpose designed and uses a chain of specific devices, customised and hopefully optimised for the venue.

There are a small but growing number of loudspeaker manufacturers who can provide an ‘intelligent’ solution. Meyer and d&b were the first, joined by Nexo, L-Acoustics and EV/Dynacord. Total package systems like these have evolved over the past couple of decades, mostly focusing on the live performance marketplace. Recent advances in digital techniques have accelerated the integration process so that, today, not only can the various digital devices and functions within a system communicate with each other, they can also, in some cases, ‘talk’ to external ones, even your mobile phone.

These systems, and others like them, are active and processor controlled, the principal benefit of this approach being to wring the very last drop of performance from the speakers, and to compensate for any idiosyncrasies, while at the same time protecting them from overload or abuse.

The built-in microprocessing devices undertake most aspects of sound system management and control so few other, separate, devices are needed. The user does however become locked in to this speaker/amplifier/controller bundle. Fortunately, these system management functions can be provided by stand-alone alternatives like BSS Omnidrive, or they can be split down into individual tasks or chunks and handled by specialised analogue units, still preferred by some users for sonic as well as ergonomic reasons.

The existence of these options permits a different, if not quite opposite approach typified by the likes of Funktion One and most recently, Void. These latter companies have designed dancefloor-specific high power sound systems, following by example (but by no means slavishly) the lead set by people like Richard Long and Stephen Court, supported by companies like JBL and Martin Audio, who have created epoch-making sound systems for seminal venues like Camden Palace and Ministry of Sound. Manufacturers who chose not to join the Dash for Digital have concentrated their efforts on making application-specific devices, safe in the knowledge that there exists a large choice of compatible hardware, much of which is also application-specific. If you take the view that clubs and dancefloors constitute a specific application, it makes sense to consider them. The current situation is not one of old versus new, but of alternative expressions of ‘new’.

If controls are required (and they always will be), the first place to insert them is and will remain the mixer. Formula Sound have known this for some time, and the incorporation of tamperproof limiters and the like has been a feature of their products for many years prior to the introduction of the Funktion One-endorsed FF-6000. It is interesting to note that the latest Allen & Heath Xone products also incorporate this facility. Such functions, along with almost infinitely variable EQ, crossover options galore, effects and more, are all incorporated into digital systems.

I have no doubt that the future of professional audio is digital, but I cannot say that, today, buying somebody’s all-in-one digital package is necessarily the right option for a club. Indeed some of the best current examples of great sound systems, by whichever standard you judge them, use the dedicated approach.

I think here of award winning outlets like Digital in Newcastle, whose owners opted for function-dedicated items at every key stage in their impressive audio system.

These are options well worth considering. If your outlet is part of an extended, corporate estate, there may be factors which tip the scales strongly in favour of operational convenience. Right now, in January 2007, my advice would be that if you are looking for the very best audio performance, you may wish to put convenience in second place, and your customers’ ears first.

At this point it is also worth the reminder that sound pressure levels, which affect both staff and customers, are of increasing interest to Health & Safety officials and to legislators to whom loud is not necessarily beautiful.

The ability to police your own sound system effectively is therefore a must. The availability of so many high quality tools and devices ought to herald a new era in club entertainment levels and standards. This new creative freedom is still underused.

Words: Walter Mirauer

From: February 2007 Issue

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