I have this one annual gig in the LA area that I should really give up. But I like the people, and the nature of the event lends itself to trying new gear, so it is a great Road Test opportunity. In fact, in the five years I have been doing the gig I don’t think we have used the same speaker system once. This year, the boys at Spectr Audio got the call. After going back and forth a few times on the requirements of the gig, we agreed on a configuration.
The Gear
All of the Spectr Audio stuff is built on the beefy side — we didn’t try dropping ‘em off the truck, but I am betting they could take it. You get 18-ply calibrated Baltic birch (“calibrated,” means that the thickness of an entire sheet varies by no more than 0.5 mm) covered with black GigArmor paint. With two handles per side as well as top and bottom, the SPX 1534s were not a problem to move around with two guys, even at 88 lbs. each. Actually for a dual 15” cab like this, 88 lbs. is not that heavy — credit that to the neodymium components inside.
Speaking of inside: two 15-inch drivers and a 3-inch, 60-degree horn coupled with a switchable passive crossover and two Neutrik Speakon NL4 connectors wired in parallel. We used four of the 1534s as our main top boxes
For subs, we went with the SPX218T. They are sleek and low-profile subs that look equally good on a rock ‘n’ roll stage or at a corporate gig or even a church install. They go down to 32 Hz (plenty for most gigs) and even with dual 18-inch drivers the weight is a reasonable 201 lbs. With a sensitivity rating of 102 dB and a max SPL of 136 dB, long term they will handle any mid-sized gig easily.
Finally, this was a gig where coverage was crucial, so we needed some satellites and went with the ArenaPro 28s. They shipped us six, although we only needed four. Same Baltic birch, (but covered with textured paint and available in custom colors), same 60-degree coverage as the 1534s, but with a pair of 8-inch drivers and a 1-inch horn and weighing in at just 39 lbs. These are ideal for spoken word, corporate and speaker-on-a-stick gigs. They are also bi-ampable and go down to 70 Hz — not bad for a small box. For our situation, side handles would have been nice, but I have to admit that the top handle and sleek sides make for a good-looking box for gigs where looks count as much as sound.
One small issue, one of the subs came out of the box with a good-sized nick in the GigArmor paint. Fixable, but I think the lack of rounded edges on the subs is going to make nicks like this a common occurrence. (Spectr Audio let us know after the gig that they had noticed the same problem and had adjusted the design as a result. The new design will be in place by the time you read this.)
The Gigs
Like I said, I have done this gig for several years, but this one was different from all of the others. This is the annual fundraiser for the biggest Catholic high school in LA and we have always done it at the school’s football field. They always do two bands and a DJ with the first band usually a jazz or Latin instrumental act and the second an “old-school” dance band generally in the 10-piece range. The DJ has monitors for himself, but sends his main mix to us. Not generally a tough gig except that it is a long day in August and these guys want to party until as late as the law will allow. They generally go until at least midnight.
Being outdoors, coverage has been something we have had to adjust for. They like it loud up front on the dance floor, but the older alumni who tend to sit farther back don’t want to have the music intrude on conversation. At the same time, everyone has to be able to clearly hear when announcements and presentations are made and awards given.
This year was made more complicated by a change of venue. The football field is being renovated and a new stadium built, so we moved from the school overlooking downtown LA out to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, which presented a dual challenge. First, volume was a big issue. In another lifetime, I was a newspaper editor in Pasadena and know very well about the neighbors of the Rose Bowl who live in multimillion-dollar homes, have considerable political muscle and don’t like their weekends intruded upon by events in the stadium at the bottom of the hill. They put up with the Rose Bowl game and a few other sporting events, but music has always been an issue. The contract with the venue explicitly called for a 95 dB limit “at the source” with no weighting specified and the promise of a $3,000-per-minute fine for exceeding that level. That was bad, but coupled with the fact that the school had to rent a venue instead of using the school for free resulting in a very tight budget made it a potential nightmare.
I partnered on this gig with my FOH cohort Jamie Rio, who generally provides racks and stacks. I throw my Midas Venice 320 and some rack gear and mics into the back of the PT Cruiser and drive from Vegas to LA. For the past two years, Jamie has had a second gig on the same day, so he has been there for setup, leaving me with a crew guy/tech and then comes back for load out. This year, I had the pleasure of working with Jon “Nacho” Gollihugh who spends most evenings mixing at a well-known Sunset Strip nightclub.
We got the mains setup with two 1534s a side on top of the 218T subs. We positioned them to try to keep as much SPL as possible on the dance floor without a lot of leakage that would cause “neighbor” issues. As to the satellites…
This is always an issue and one that is more psychological games than anything else. They want to hear the announcements, but if they can see the speakers then they are “too loud” before we even turn them on.
We tried to get around that this year by hiding them — something that the small size of the AP28s made very easy. They ended up halfway back between the stage and the last tables in a pair of planters filled with — what else? — roses as the picture shows. (The picture below also shows that climbing around in rose planters in shorts is not a great idea. But we do what we need to do.)
We wanted to see what the Spectr Audio stuff could do under worst-case conditions, so initially set up full- range with the intention to move to bi-amped before the gig began. But the weird speaker placement and need to hide cables and such coupled with two guys and a 100-degree August afternoon put us too close to hit time to make the changeover, so we did the entire gig in “worst-case” mode. To make it even tougher for Spectr Audio, the “A” amps (except one) were all out on the other gig. We got one good QSC amp for the subs and low-end, MI grade (I won’t even mention the brand) amps with 1/4-inch connectors (not even binding posts) for the tops and satellites.
So, how did it go? Let’s start by asking Jon:
“I was shocked at how well these speakers sounded even running full-range. I figured they were going to be another run of the mill box with a couple of 15s and a horn with some cheap compression driver. So many boxes have built in crossovers that are totally worthless — you have to bi-amp them to get anything to sound halfwway decent. As I walked the dance floor, I was surprised that a full-range PA speaker could sound this good. The coverage from box to box was even. The quality didn't fall off as you got to the edge of the horn. With two boxes splayed together they created one even coverage area with hardly any sense of hot
spots or dead areas.”
I would concur with all of that and add that the “seam” between the coverage of the 1534s and the AP28s was pretty much non-existent.
We found out when we got there that the “hard” dB limit was not enforced until 11:01 p.m. so we were running about 98-100 dB on the dance floor until then with the satellite boxes barely on and then bringing them up for the awards part of the evening.
In the end, we had zero complaints about volume OR coverage (well, they complained when I had to all but kill the PA at 11 p.m., but that ‘s another story). The organizers commented on the high quality of the sound and we’ll be back next year. If I had my way we would have the same system with us.
Spectr Audio Speakers
What It Is: Good performing passive speaker cabinets.
Who It’s For: Bands, small-to mid-sized soundcos, corporates, installs and gigs up to 2,000 people.
Pros: Dead simple. Nice sounding even in passive crossover mode.
Cons: Lack of rounded edges on subs look sleek, but may lead to chips in the paint. (But this is being addressed so…)
How Much: AP29 MSRP: $1,790, SPX218T MSRP: $3,000, SPX1534N MSRP: $Z2,780
Web site: www.spectaudio.com
