Miami’s Ultra Music Festival reminds one of Fight Club. Not so much because no one talks about it — they do, sometimes to the exclusion of all else, like they were in mid-March, when half of South Florida ignored the Republican presidential primary held that same week and showed up at Bayfront Park in various stages of dress (or undress) and consciousness. But rather because Ultra, like many EDM fests, has turned into a gut-punch contest, to see whose subs can most efficiently rearrange the audience’s internal organs.
Ultra is also a main stop on the growing EDM festival circuit, one that very much has its own particular audio requirements, much of which center on those ultrasonic, high-SPL, four-on-the floor pile drivers. A genre that used to reside primarily in nightclubs and at warehouse raves has been migrating to a touring paradigm, as DJs hit the festival circuit in between Las Vegas and Ibiza residencies or do mini-tours whose infrastructure might require five semis but whose personnel can be readily accommodated by an Austin Mini Cooper.
Gimme Da Funktion
But there was a new face at Ultra this year. Sound system developer Funktion One comes out of the nightclub demi-monde, where it’s been a leading brand in all the right places for two decades, and into the touring world, where it’s confronting an expanding number of touring-sound brands converging on the U.S. market, chasing music’s remaining moneymaker: live sound.
Vero — Funktion One’s new large-format touring sound system — officially debuted at Prolight + Sound Frankfurt 2016 just weeks after it made the trek to Ultra. Like its parent company, Vero is the brainchild of one of the founding fathers of modern live sound, Tony Andrews, who founded Turbosound 38 years ago with his partner John Newsham. Funktion One was formed in 1992 by Andrews, Newsham and a number of other partners, including Andrews’ wife Ann and members of the original Turbosound R&D team, which included Toby Hunt, Steve Fisher, Martin Wall and Yann Favret.
The Vero Project
Vero builds off of F1’s established system characteristics, which include very fast transient response for low and low-mid frequencies, which is what make the club systems as tight and articulate as they are, and why they don’t need to honk upper frequencies for balance. In fact, says Ron Lorman, a veteran entrepreneurial FOH mixer (Frank Zappa, Miles Davis) and an associate of Hartke Systems founder Larry Hartke, who is now helping Vero find its place in the U.S. market, Funktion One systems were unique in that they built a reputation among clubgoers as well as system designers in the last decade. “Nobody goes to a concert because there’s a JBL sound system there, but I’ve seen club kids with the name ‘Funktion One’ tattooed on them,” he says. Those same characteristics are built into the Vero’s massive 32-inch subwoofers, whose half-ton weight absorb up to 50,000 watts per box. (There were a dozen of those per side at Ultra.)
But the Vero system puts emphasis on other practical aspects as well. For instance, Andrews describes Vero as a complete touring system comprising speakers, flying rig, amplifiers, cabling and a prediction software package named Projection that allows users to achieve optimum array designs for smooth audience coverage and impact. Another software feature, Geometric Energy Summation (GES), is designed to eliminate the need for delay positions up to distances of 1,000 feet or more. The Vero’s rigging system can be adjusted while in place, and an amplifier rack loaded with Lab.gruppen PLM20k+ units is fully shock-mounted and is fitted with retractable doors that protect against the elements. The racks’ solid polyurethane wheels don’t deform under pressure and are designed to carry the maximum load capacity over varied terrain. Even if your tour takes you to Afghanistan, it sounds like you’re covered.
But Why Now?
But the big question is, why a new touring system now, when the market seems absolutely saturated with brands and systems? Andrews is sanguine about that. “The number of SR manufacturers has steadily increased over the last 25 years to meet the public demand for big audio,” he agrees. “However, at top level touring, there are around half a dozen manufacturers appearing on riders, with most of it going to only two of these manufacturers. This narrow rider-driven situation is not good for progressing large-scale audio evolution. It could be said there is development in computer control and DSP aspects of loudspeaker systems; however, the loudspeakers themselves are still generally derivatives of Christian Heil’s original idea.”
The company’s response to their perception of the market has been to adapt its horn-loaded cone drivers into a vertical array, with its deployment and touring advantages. “We developed a vertical array where the horns sum perfectly in the far-field, which demands [that] the rigging maintains coherency at any angle between half a degree and 12.5 degrees,” he elaborates. “This has instigated an innovative, patent-pending rigging system as well as a new take on spectrum and directivity division. In fact, Vero is Funktion One entering the live market with a vertical array which meets, and we believe exceeds, today’s expectations.”
Andrews says attention to touring details, honed by his Turbosound legacy that goes back to the days when Pink Floyd and Dire Straits were touring, will also propel the Vero brand. “The right connectors, wheels, cabling and amp rack design were evaluated and developed,” he says. “An unexpected convenience emerging from the unique rigging is that the enclosures on their dolly travel locked in a straight line which facilitates very straightforward lifting and flying in. The angles between the enclosures are conveniently set by the dial on each side once the system is hanging.”
Andrews says that complete Vero systems are already part of the rental inventory of two U.S. rental companies, Clearwing and Sound Investment, Funktion One’s longtime U.S. distributor. He is less specific on pricing, which he says will be “much more cost-effective than other systems of this caliber.”
He’s more direct about how the system — and EDM — will fare in a (nearly) post-SFX environment, as the wheels come off of that publicly traded conglomerate of DJ shows that lost $13.2 million last year.
“The revenue a rental house can hope to realize by providing two or three days of big audio is trivial compared with the six- and maybe seven-figure sums being achieved by EDM acts,” he says, confidently. “Safe to say, the live industry will continue to change, and we can expect new event formats in upcoming years for all to enjoy with the benefit of spectacular audio.”
For all his history of technical success, Andrews is also a natural salesman, bringing to bear on Vero the kind of enthusiasm that delineates the difference between selling a product and evangelizing a vision. And he is setting forth at a time when the touring business remains on a high: 2015 was a record year, with the total gross of the top-100 for the North American tours hitting $3.12 billion, up 14 percent over 2014, as per Pollstar, and the top-100 worldwide tours generating a total gross of $4.71 billion, up 11 percent over 2014.
But at the moment, it is a crowded sound reinforcement world out there, too, and as we see happening throughout music, labels and promoters are going for sure things: the handful of record producers who make most of the hits and the touring brands that are already on most of the stages. Those riders are part of that effect, an industry in search of certainty in an uncertain business. Vero’s debut asks the question, can the club king make a go of it on the road?
