The Beatles reportedly used a few Shure Vocal Masters at Shea Stadium back in 1965. They were hardly enough to fill the Mets' cavernous venue, though even the old honeycomb horn PA system that used to mangle Ron Swoboda's name wasn't much help against the roar of 55,000 hysterical adolescents. But it does remind us that while large concert PAs have quite an evolutionary history, from Bob Heil and his Grateful Dead stacks to the modern flying line array, small clubs have had a more spotty time of it, making do with what have been for decades essentially cast-offs from an earlier era. Line arrays are the technology heroes of the new century, but try getting one of those into a grungy club with a 12-foot ceiling.
Compact Line Arrays
Well, now you can. A whole new generation of compact line arrays is breathing life into the small club sector, and it's also good news for small churches (yes, there are still such places) and small meeting and reception halls, and even some larger venues with special challenges. Products like Bose's MA12, Renkus-Heinz's Iconyx, JBL's VT4886 subcompact line array and its CBT Series line array columns and Community Professional's Entasys column array are giving small venue owners some new choices.
Scott Hayward, owner of a small chain of music venues in New England, says the Meyer Sound MINA compact line array system that he installed in his newest venue, the Tupelo Music Hall in White River Junction, VT, is perfectly scaled for the 240-seat club, which opened last October. His other club, Tupelo Music Hall Londonderry, across the border in New Hampshire, opened in 2004, when only conventionally-sized line arrays were available. Hayward installed a Meyer M'elodie system in there. Comparing the two installations, which are in nearly identically proportioned rooms and have the same mix console and monitor systems, he says both offer excellent sound, but that the compact line array is so much better scaled to the room's dimensions.
"Less is More"
"There is an aesthetic element to a PA system, and, in my thinking, less is definitely more," he says. "I see enormous PA systems in clubs that could use systems that are a quarter of that size and realize that the days of massive PAs as way of advertising your club's sound quality are over. It's old technology. A cleaner look is a better look."
It wasn't the least expensive option – Hayward says the MINA compact system cost more than the M'elodie did to cover a similar space – but the way the smaller PA blends into the performance area and keeps the stage more focused was worth the additional expense.
Looks were also important to Howard Fulton, production manager at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, DE. The landmarked interior of the 140-year-old venue needed a full-range PA system that could handle the range of productions it hosted, from rock to opera to rock operas, while keeping the sound system as invisible as possible. The theater now has six Community Entasys columns on each side of the stage, stacked atop each other, 22 feet tall. Fulton says that this category of PA configuration solved both the aesthetic and the economic issues of PAs. "We couldn't have a house PA that was stacked or flown because of sightline and aesthetic concerns, and it could get expensive renting a PA when it was needed," he says. "This solved all those issues."
Arrays vs. Columns
Small venue owners will have a choice both in terms of manufacturer and between conventionally configured compact line arrays and the newer column-type solutions that some brands are rolling out. Some, like JBL, offer both types; others have gone with one or the other format. The choice between a compact, arrayable system featuring modular, multi-element line arrays versus a simpler column-type solution is based on several factors, including throw, vertical-coverage needs, total system SPL requirements and budget. Higher values for each category would suggest a modular array solution. In terms of cost, the modular array solution offers plenty of flexibility, allowing users to shape the curvature of the array to precisely fit the space's needs, but its costs more than the column approach, which is the most cost-effective and, in many cases, the easiest to position for invisibility. However, it's worth the time and expense to get the music area spectrally analyzed before committing to a certain size of column, because column height directly influences low frequency directivity: the taller the column (or array), the better is its low frequency response. Column arrays are generally passive and have limited directionality, compared to highly steerable, self-powered modular line arrays. But those limitations are disappearing. For instance, Community's Entasys system has multiple mechanical steering settings and also offers a low frequency-only column with six 3.5-inch drivers that reinforce the low end between 200 Hz and 1.6 kHz.
Whichever solution is chosen, compact modular array or column, anything that gets better sound and better sound control into smaller venues is a welcome event, because more sophisticated gear often makes for more jobs for the people who really know how to operate it.
