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My first ADRaudio speaker gig
Michael 'Bink' Knowles:
I had my first gig tonight with a package of ADRaudio Road Test demo speakers and they sound great! The package is two compact 10" x 1.4" tops, two 18" compact subs and two 12" coaxial wedges. All self-powered; they use Icepower modules.
Jerry Coe
The gig I chose for this Road Test was an old-timey barn dance with American folk songs performed live by 6-10 musicians plus a caller on wireless headset mic for the reels and square dances. My friend Jerry Coe throws the party at his Berkeley metal smithy so I've known about it but have never offered to mix it because most of my gigs are much bigger and I don't own enough gear to pull it off alone--I mix on other people's gear.
This time was different because Alex and Franci of ADRaudio met up with me at a party thrown by PSW at the recent AES convention in SF and said words to the effect "keep an eye on us--something's coming." When their speaker design effort was ready, Bennett Prescott got me the shipment of speakers for demo purposes and I thought "Hey, I could use these guys on the Coe Studios barn dance!" It's a perfect match because the room is just the right size for a pair of 10" tops plus sub and the stage requirements are modest enough so that two 12" wedges are fully satisfying. This is the kind of gig where the musicians listen very intensely to each other. It's also the kind of gig where the audience has discriminating taste in sound. The kind of tough crowd I like.
The space is big enough for 50 people to dance close-packed or 24 to dance with some freedom of movement. About 100 people could have been expected. I set the two U103 speakers on tripods in the corners and I set the single ATA118 subwoofer at the corner nearest the stage. I didn't feel that I needed more than one subwoofer at the gig. Also, my little Ford Focus might not be able to fit two subs in the backseat! I could have tried harder but when one fit I was happy. This is not jungle or drum'n'bass... it's folk. Lastly, I put two M1225s on the corners of the stage for criss-cross monitoring such that anything on the left would be pumped through the right speaker and things on the right would show up in the left speaker. Very basic. Since the sub was at the corner of the stage, I put a wedge on top of it. I was looking to get a shallow angle from the wedges and they have a perfectly angled part of the box but when I set the wedges on this segment they tipped forward. Their center of gravity is too far forward if you want to use the shallow angle. Not to worry, the lads at the metal shop found some wood blocks to put under the front so as to give us the desired angle.
Most of the instruments were pretty loud on their own. Banjo wasn't piped into the PA very much at all. Stand up bass needed the PA; I sent it to the mains and to one of the stage wedges and it was the only thing going to the aux-fed subwoofer. There were three vocal mics and everything else was miked for the recording I was making. I ended up putting everything into the PA even if it was just a little taste.
The caller used one of the cheaper Shure wireless headset mics. I gated it mildly with the Rane G4 gate sidechain narrowed down to just looking at vocal freqs and I also tuned the headset mic for anti-feedback with an inserted Ashly parametric EQ. Sounded a little hissy/noisy/overcompanded but usable. Nothing special. Not even the best speakers will be able to make a mic like this one sound great. You have to start with great first.
During my setup I noticed that the board (a MixWiz 16:2) wasn't showing hot enough level for my taste. The MixWiz wasn't putting enough juice into the Ashly digital EQ/crossover feeding the tops and sub nor was it putting enough juice into the Peavey MediaMatrix that I was using for PEQ and GEQ on mons. I could hear a hair too much hiss in the speakers. All of these ADRaudio speakers are at full gain all the time just like Meyer speakers so I decided to put a 10dB pad behind each speaker just like I do with Meyers boxes in similar situations where I don't expect to need all of the available gain. I could have put the XLR pads down in my rack following the EQs that feed the speakers but by this time my FOH position was pretty much stuck in place and hard to get to. I was placed next to a giant immovable trip-hammer made in 1895 in Boston and if I leaned down behind my FOH EQ I would cover my arm (again) in a century's worth of metal dust and cutting oil. THAT'S why my XLR 10dB pads are behind the speakers.
(Another weird thing about FOH position is that there were bottles of scary liquids on a shelf right above the laptops. Things labeled "Liver of Sulphur". "Copper Sulphate" and "15% Nitric Acid." Love those metal shop guys.)
The speakers sound great! They didn't have any hidden 'gotchas' and they were very smooth at the higher peaks. Their limiting was beginning to kick in (I went around behind them to look at the LEDs on the back) but these limiters are gentle which means they start a little early so that by the time you get to the box's peak you are fully engaging the limiter. I was just tickling them--I had plenty of headroom left.
I kept getting compliments all night from the dancers and musicians on the high quality sound.
Thanks to Bennett Prescott for ironing out the delivery kinks to get me this set of Road Test speakers. Thanks to Lee Brenkman who provided the A&H MixWiz, the Ultimate stands and the EWI snake. Thanks to Alex and Franci at ADRaudio who have designed a very pleasing set of speakers!
-Bink
Ales Dravinec 'Alex':
Quote:
...I was placed next to a giant immovable trip-hammer made in 1895 in Boston and if I leaned down behind my FOH EQ I would cover my arm (again) in a century's worth of metal dust and cutting oil...
...(Another weird thing about FOH position is that there were bottles of scary liquids on a shelf right above the laptops. Things labeled "Liver of Sulphur". "Copper Sulphate" and "15% Nitric Acid." Love those metal shop guys.)...
Talking about "non-conventional" gig....
I wonder if all those Jerry Coles hand tools jingled and rattled during acts...
Wish I was there
Alex
Michael 'Bink' Knowles:
Quote:
...I wonder if all those Jerry Coles hand tools jingled and rattled during acts...
I was afraid the metal shop would rattle and sound tinny but it was not a problem. Maybe it's because the tools were so heavy. Actually, it sounded warm and wooden in that space.
Alex, I liked the horn patterns of both your U103 and your M1225. The 12" coaxial pattern was nice and wide--I could hear detail in the wedge mix when I walked up to the edge of the stage to talk to the performers.
M1225 upside-down at Stage Right.
-Bink
Philip Roberts:
Michael 'Bink' Knowles wrote on Sun, 11 February 2007 04:02
Another weird thing about FOH position is that there were bottles of scary liquids on a shelf right above the laptops. Things labeled "Liver of Sulphur". "Copper Sulphate" and "15% Nitric Acid." Love those metal shop guys.
Wow, I hope that bottle of Nitric Acid wasn't full, even a tiny drop of Nitric acid an do an number on skin. (I was a chem. major for a while and yes I've gotten nitric acid burns)
From the sounds of the various review here I'd like some of the ADR wedges for the church I work with however they are a little out of my price range.
Bennett Prescott:
Bink, thanks for the kind words, and for being so supportive with that shipping mixup. Glad you liked the off-axis response, Alex takes evenness off axis very seriously, since that's often where the majority of the audience (and probably you too!) is going to be. I understand you've got a number of shows lined up to use this gear on, and I'm glad that you'll be able to put it to good use. I hope Lee was able to get a listen in as well.
Interesting wedge use, though, that's a new one for me. I've used them on the face opposite the handle so that they were perpendicular to the stage for front fill use, and they're stable that way, but I'd never have thought to use that "other" angle!
Here's an example from a show I did with Jim Bowersox and Brian Bolly in a wide, shallow venue:
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