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Author Topic: My first ADRaudio speaker gig  (Read 56615 times)

Michael 'Bink' Knowles

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My first ADRaudio speaker gig
« on: February 11, 2007, 04:02:30 AM »

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.

http://www.coestudios.com/custom/images/jerry2.jpg
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.  Cool

index.php/fa/7902/0/

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.  Very Happy  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.  Confused  THAT'S why my XLR 10dB pads are behind the speakers.  Razz

(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
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
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Ales Dravinec 'Alex'

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Re: My first ADRaudio speaker gig
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2007, 06:41:31 AM »

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...
Smile

Wish I was there

Alex
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Ales Dravinec
R&D manager, owner
ADRaudio
Slovenia

'There's no replacement for displacement' Carroll Shelby (Jim Bowersox, Tim McCulloch)
'Put speakers up in the air, where they belong' Bill Hanley

Michael 'Bink' Knowles

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Re: My first ADRaudio speaker gig
« Reply #2 on: February 11, 2007, 10:30:35 AM »

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.  Smile



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.

index.php/fa/7903/0/
M1225 upside-down at Stage Right.

-Bink
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
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Philip Roberts

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Re: My first ADRaudio speaker gig
« Reply #3 on: February 11, 2007, 03:13:26 PM »

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. Sad


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Philip Roberts
Director of Media Engineering
Pioneer Memorial Seventh Day Adventist Church
Berrien Springs MI

Bennett Prescott

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Re: My first ADRaudio speaker gig
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2007, 03:31:24 PM »

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:
index.php/fa/7905/0/
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-- Bennett Prescott
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ADRaudio d.o.o.
Cell: (518) 488-7190

"Give me 6dB and I shall move the world." -Archimedes

Michael 'Bink' Knowles

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Re: My first ADRaudio speaker gig
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2007, 06:29:46 PM »

Quote:

...I'd never have thought to use that "other" angle!...


Hey, no problem. I definitely would NOT want to see some ballast added to the wedge with CG correction as a goal. The wedges are surprisingly light and I wouldn't go changing THAT.  Very Happy

-Bink
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles

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ADRaudio demo package fits in my car
« Reply #6 on: February 12, 2007, 11:23:09 PM »

The veteran road warriors among you will laugh at this but for me this is new territory. Like I said earlier, I mix on other people's gear which means I don't normally try to fit speakers into my little Ford Focus car.

index.php/fa/7926/0/

These shots were taken in the brief sunny time before the frequent downpours got started on this rainy day in the Bay.

Top shot is a U103 top box in the passenger seat. When I scooted the front seat back to lock in the subwoofer there was enough room on the passenger's floormat for another M1225 wedge but the two I had both fit in the trunk so... In the trunk is a U103 on the left behind the never-used red gas can and two M1225s on the right. It's not as easy to see the one that's deeper in the trunk but it's there. The bottom part of the picture is the single ATA118 subwoofer that was able to fit in my back seat. I took a closer look at the headroom in the car and there's no way I could ever stand them up to fit two of the subwoofers in the same carload. The PowerCon cables are next to the sub.

Go ahead, laugh. My carload of speakers can kick your carload of speakers's butt.  Very Happy

-Bink
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
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Peter Etheredge

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Re: ADRaudio demo package fits in my car
« Reply #7 on: February 13, 2007, 07:30:14 AM »

Michael 'Bink' Knowles wrote on Mon, 12 February 2007 22:23



Go ahead, laugh. My carload of speakers can kick your carload of speakers's butt.  Very Happy

-Bink



Laughing  You're carload of speakers is also worth more than the car that they are loaded into!

Then again, were possible to fit my rig into my '95 Nissan Sentra my lowly Yami Clubs and 608's would still be worth more than the car  Sad
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Peter Etheredge
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Top-Notch Productions, INC.
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Ales Dravinec 'Alex'

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Re: ADRaudio demo package fits in my car
« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2007, 03:37:28 PM »

Maybe two documented applications would be in order :

Top : side fill (same on stage left) gives good feel of sound on stage, so individual monitoring through wedges doesn't have to be so "comprehensive" any more...also provides needed LF energy, which is simply not present on stage if cardioid subs are part of main rig.

Bottom : Properly splayed and properly "dimmed" speakers just in front of first row of audience are essential, to make front row spectators happy...I don't have to mention, who those people usually are...

Alex


index.php/fa/7980/0/
edit : spelling (priperly-properly)
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Ales Dravinec
R&D manager, owner
ADRaudio
Slovenia

'There's no replacement for displacement' Carroll Shelby (Jim Bowersox, Tim McCulloch)
'Put speakers up in the air, where they belong' Bill Hanley

Tony "T" Tissot

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Re: ADRaudio demo package fits in my car
« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2007, 07:48:57 PM »

Ales Dravinec 'Alex' wrote on Thu, 15 February 2007 12:37

to make front row spectators happy...I don't have to mention, who those people usually are...

Alex


? Buttheads? For being willing to pay way too much?
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MNGS
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