When pioneering acid jazz group, The Brand New Heavies, joined forces with Ruby Turner to bring the curtain down on this year’s Gateshead International Jazz Festival at the Sage Gateshead, local service company Nitelites were brought in to fill the 1640-capacity main auditorium with a premier RCF TT+ line array PA system.
Having worked with the venue many times previously, Nitelites know how to maximise system coherency in an unusually high building with several tiers, and the active TTL33-A – set in two hangs of 11 elements – effortlessly provided even coverage for the stalls and both balcony areas; up to a level of 14 metres.
In addition, Nitelites ground-stacked a further three TTL33-A’s left and right of the stage, to draw the image back down to the nearfield stalls area. But probably the biggest breakthrough was their deployment of a pair each of the new-generation TT1-A and TT2-A, launched this spring at Frankfurt Prolight+Sound. The former was used for under balcony fills and the latter for stage, left and right front fill.
This configuration proved a big success. The Brand New Heavies’ FOH sound engineer Mike Fitzsimons, pronounced that he was “blown away” by the system SPL on his debut with the TT+. “The system was absolutely amazing – it’s hard to believe it’s such a compact box until you look up and see it. I’d be delighted to see it appear on the next venue spec I receive.”
Nitelites director Andy Magee corroborated this. “Performance wise it maintained its coherence from area to area — and much of that was due to the use of RDNet” [RCF’s proprietary control and monitor network which is compatible with the TT+ range].
“It’s easy to set up EQ’s, delays etc because of the DSP in the loudspeaker enclosures and it will then scan all individual components and receive a visual reference should any warnings be flagged. We used RDNet to align all sources which was essential, since this was a large production with a brass section.”
Magee then turned his attention to RCF’s new TT1-A and TT2-A. “Their onboard networking takes the system up to the next league in terms of controllability — and with the delay built into the box, the DSP allowed us to do away with expensive external processing. The purpose-designed large format 3″ neodymium compression drivers sound so uniform, and incomparable to anything else I have experienced.”
Having also provided RCF’s ‘big brother’ TTL55-A for the recent Ligabue Royal Albert Hall concerts, Nitelites have now been able to thoroughly evaluate the full portfolio of RCF’s front line solutions as the company gears up for bigger challenges this summer, to be announced shortly.
