Versatile front of house engineer Barry Bartlett utilised Turbosound’s powerful and authoritative Flashline line array speaker system to deliver clear, seamless audio for the Young Voices Arena Tour earlier this year.
Featuring choirs ranging from five to eight-thousand children’s voices, Bartlett was using the Flashline system, supplied by long time Turbosound partners Britannia Row Productions, for the first time. “What really struck me was the consistent horizontal and lateral coverage achieved by Flashline across the huge performance spaces, including London’s cavernous O2 Arena,” enthuses Bartlett. “I was bowled over!”
Bartlett, who has been taking care of Front of House for Young Voices for the past three years, continues: “Many systems, even the top range line arrays, sound great when you’re in line with the centre of the box but can sound very different when you move out to other positions. I can honestly say the sound delivered by Flashline was seamless, left to right, you could walk from one side of the arena to the other and from the top to the bottom and there was absolutely no perceptible change.”
The show, which features the largest school choir in the world comprising thousands of school children from hundreds of different junior schools, includes musical styles ranging from pop and rock to folk and classical. Turbosound’s Flashline system — known for its ability to deliver hi-fi sound quality to large audiences via its modular line array loudspeaker elements, subwoofers, rigging hardware, and fully loaded and tested amplifier racks — did the kids proud.
“Choirs in any form, amateur or professional, are never easy to engineer — particularly when combined with an amplified band,” continues Bartlett. “These choirs of young children have not yet developed mature, full bandwidth voices, consequently source levels can fluctuate enormously according to pitch, and also according to how well the kids know the lyrics! However, the Flashline system delivers a very natural and impressive presence that features a lovely warm low/mid-range, exactly as I would expect from a descendant of Flashlight, which also always conveys that all important full sound.”
Martin Reid, head of marketing for Turbosound explains, “The Flashline system makes extensive use of paper cone transducers to ensure vocal frequencies are delivered with power and authority. In addition, the new generation Dendritic waveguides ensure that a phase coherent wavefront reaches all audience members with uniform frequency response. The power capability of the four frequency bands in the TFS-900H line array cabinet is exactly matched to each channel of the 20000DP four-channel DSP-based amplifier. This results in near-perfect energy transfer to each of the eleven dedicated transducers.”
Bartlett and the team from Britannia Row were extremely impressed. “It’s easier to get a good level from a little source than with the previous systems I’ve used,” concludes Bartlett. “This is supremely important with this kind of show. I thought it was a brilliant sounding system. And the proof of that came when almost immediately the rehearsal kicked off the client came over and said, ‘this is sounding great, straight off the bat’. There was a noticeable difference from day one.”
The Young Voices Choir toured some of the UK’s biggest arenas in January and February including London’s O2, Manchester Arena, and Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena.
info: www.turbosound.com
info: www.music-group.copm