| It was fun this last Saturday helping Megasound out of Saint Marteen (U.S & British island area) with his new Danley Jericho 2 rig. Loic’s (Mega sound) rig for this Gospel Festival deployment are two Danley Jericho2 mains powered with two Powersoft K6 and K4 amplifiers, six Function 1 F221 subs powered by Lab Gruppen FP+14,000 with a Midas Verona analog console for front of house.   He faced a few challenges one of them was to convince the promoter he could do the festival with two J2 boxes one per side instead of the usual fourteen (14) box hung of D.A.S line array per side which his immediate competitor deployed last year as standard also it was his first time in this venue and his first outdoor gig with two Jericho boxes. The promoters hired T.B.N Ministries of Florida head sound engineer to do the house mix (I forgot what his name was) therefore emphasis was being placed on quality world class audio. I was invited in to help so everything could go as smoothly as possible audio system tech wise. Limited flight options for the Christmas season would only allow me to fly in on the day of the event which was held in Saint Marteen’s premier live sound venue the Festival Village. The early morning rush to the airport also caused me to forget my measuring microphones and Loic did not have one or anything close. I believe in measuring and using the ears as the final judgment it translates to a much better hearing picture of the system capability but for now it is just going to be my ears, well our ears alone this last Saturday. The rigging was already completed by Loic and his crew with the J2 flown twelve (12) feet off the ground… Fired up the rig with pink noise running and it was immediately clear just listening to the noise there was nothing much happening below 50Hz anyone who does this on a regular basis knows what I am talking about with pink noise in a system which should have adequate sub energy to complement the mains but for now I was not interested in the subs we were focusing on the mains. The mix positions was about 120 feet back and appeared to be directly between the two J2 mains. We listened and tried to determine if there was any phase, polarity or frequency differences between the two boxes by panning left and right walking the coverage pattern etc we instantly noticed the right side was lacking something and definitely not the same as the left especially when played at moderate volume, it was immediately clear in the amplifier rack the Powersoft K6 driving the low mid for the right side had died. Loic replaced this amplifier with a Lab Gruppen FP+14,000 which I configured via the dip switches in the back for an approximate output voltage peak limiter level to match the drivers voltage rating loaded in the box, after this was completed we were good. Now for the real test with music, Loic’s choice of Sub is Function one’s F221 this box is a double 21 inch design loaded with Eighteen sound most powerful Neo 21 inch driver 21NL9W9600, all powered at twice the R.M.S with Lab Gruppen’s FP+14,000 three boxes per side. My recent pro sub experience was two nights before where I was the pilot for one of our small deployment with eight TH-115 subs therefore my memory is still fresh about qualities below 100 Hz. It takes a while disassociated with them to appreciate the tone of other boxes… Yes, all other subs sound strange to me. This may sound bias to many but this is what it is with me. STRANGE is just an understatement to describe the tone of Function one’s F221, there seem to be a huge peak of probably over 15 to 20db in the 60-80 Hz area which seem to be dominating everything else from this box, probably Function one has special tunings to tame this thing but we did not have any. I tried cutting back as much as I could but it was still dominating not forgetting the sudden roll of below fifty (50) Hz, I lowered the high pass to 31 Hz with a Butters worth filter, tried to apply some EQ boost between 31 and 50 Hz area for more low end juice but this peak between 50-80 Hz was just not doing us any justice. I am not used to spoon feeding a sub with that much EQ to make it sound good. After phase aligning the sub with the mains as best as I could by ear the peak in frequency response seem to get even louder. Looking at the box physical size I think the horn path and mouth is just way too short and small to get any low end out of it. A Google search also revealed Function one seem to be popular with high performance D.Js in Europe this reinforced my belief this box has a D.J appeal to it. The sound engineer disliked the sub so much he ended up using very little to almost turning them off completely for the duration of the concert a clear indication how nasty sounding they were. I am not convinced yet about the 21 inch horn sub designs out there these things move a lot of air but they seem to color the sound in their own way either by pure harmonic distortion or box resonance noise etc. As far as I am concerned the present designs I have heard are not suited for live sound. I have heard a few of them both D.J types (Cervin Vega etc) and a few suppose to be pro others (EAW SB20001 etc). I think better results can be achieved by running them in infra mode but that is a discussion for another day. Loic you need to get real subs man, you already have a taste for quality mains I hope this will translate to better taste below 100 Hz. The crossing over from smooth sweet sounding low mid to sudden brut none musical lows is just not doing any justice to the J2 man, well in this venue; this extremely loud noisy 60-80 Hz peak seem to distracting everything else quite a bit. The wow factor of present day live sound reinforcement is also heavily dependent on properly well defined low end. My experience with quality low end is people always ask to turn it up more not turn it down. The Danley Jericho 2 is made to sound right without much or any external EQ and this was the case in Festival Village, a small high end, High mid shelf was all that was applied probably because of the Class D nature of the Powersoft amps. After sound check we had an hour of free time to play with before show time, I played some of my favorite tuning tracks with the subs muted, drove the rig to be loud enough with a few runs to the amplifier rack monitoring their behavior. Loic when you are not the pilot you should never run you rig without limiters it will cost you man…. The stereo imaging reminds me of Nexo’s GEOT, exciting and musical Nexo has a competitor now. The J2 loudness is not the ear hurting type but a smooth easy on the ears loudness it was only when I tried to keep a conversation I realize how loud this thing was, I was left to believe one can easily lose their hearing in front of this boxes and not being conscious of it. The promoter walked up to us and said there is not one location in the venue where he cannot hear clean, detailed and sweet loud full range audio, even way off on the sides modern day technology is just amazing he said shaking his head. The sound engineer was just as impressed, he spoke through a mike smiles on his face, as long as you can get a mike to sound like this with your console EQ flat your mains are good. After we settled down with the show running smoothly I walked around the venue to verify his claim about the off-axis response, he was right there was not one location in the venue missing perfect full range coverage, I was left to believe the Danley guys seem to have made an error about the horizontal dispersion capability of this box it seem to be more of a 125-145 or more degree box than 90. I went outside of the venue the guys at the gate commented, man we have never heard it like this on the outside for other shows. But the biggest supprise for the night was how efficient the box was, let me be clear the system was not being run loud during the concert, well how loud it was the best I can explain is up front to about fifty to seventy feet back one would have to raise their voices close to the ears of whoever they are talking too to keep a conversation, but looking at the behavior of the amps there was just occasional flashes on the first output LED of the amps. High Sensitivity seems to be one of its strengths.The onboard DSP of the powersoft amps allows one to monitor the loudspeaker connected, we were doing about 90 watts to the high frequency drivers on average and 125 watts to the mids per box. I was left to believe the box can easily be powered with a four channel professional amplifier for an extremly loud concert. Quality well behave speakers do make a difference, Tom was asked to challenge the popular Line array and he did, the box does all of what a line array does but better and more. The rumor on the street about its capabilities is true, you just have to audition a demo or attend a concert where it is being used and you will be converted. Franz Francis |
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