ADAMSON S10 CLEANS UP IN AISLE6
13 November 2017
Brisbane’s Aisle6 Productions, headed up by Scott Mullane, has taken delivery of an Adamson S10 line array system. Scott opted for 16 elements of S10 mid highs supplemented by eight Adamson S119 subwoofers, driven by four Lab.gruppen PLM12K44 power amps. “I love how clean and powerful the S10 is,” says Scott. “It just responds the way you like. I’ve found when you push some line arrays, you start to lose dynamic range. The Adamson retains the dynamics. The vocals are front and centre, and the stereo imaging is stunning.”
Aisle6 originally started as a recording studio in the 1990s, and has since expanded to provide multiple production services. “As with most in the music industry, we’re pretty diverse,” says Scott. “We look after a few venues in Brisbane, we do consulting for installations in theatres, schools, and churches, and we do production for community and cultural groups. I tour with a few acts, including Marina Prior, The Screaming Jets, Baby Animals, Wafia, and Darren Middleton. We had the need to expand our inventory for key events, and elevate the quality of audio we’re producing for larger outdoor events particularly.”
“Quality is a big factor in what we do,” continues Scott. “When I tour, I mix on a lot of top-tier PAs, and each leading brand has its strengths. I was attracted to Adamson because of the unique design features such as Kevlar drivers and 19-inch subs, in particular. The mid-high in the S10 has a lower crossover point than the average box. I find that any acoustic anomalies caused when you push high SPL through a mid-high box are heard in the crossover point first, typically around 2kHz. With the Adamson crossing over around 800Hz, I find they respond much better to high SPL, and the vocal path stays really smooth and musical.”
The Adamson S119 subwoofer runs a single 19-inch Kevlar driver from a 5-inch voice coil. “The S119 has completely impressed me with its musicality and sheer output,” remarks Scott. “I dislike subs that have a tuned sound to them, or a dominant note. The S119 is very musical, and full-spectrum within its bandwidth. I also like the fact there’s patching on both the front and back of each sub. This means when you’re doing cardioid front-back-front or font-back configurations, the patching is very simple. They’ve thought about the technician in the field and how not to complicate their job.”
Adamson’s practical design thinking extends to their simple rigging system. “The S10’s rigging is great,” agrees Scott. “Adamson have done their homework. One person can pre-rig all the element’s angles on the dolly in the factory. Even when the system is in the air, or ground-stacked on the sub, it’s really easy for one person to change the angles. It’s a pin, a slide, a re-pin, and you’re done. It’s intuitive.”
Scalability and flexibility are important to any rental company, and the S10 has already proved both in the field for Aisle 6. “We used the S10 rig at the Red Deer Music and Arts Festival, with The Preatures headlining,” relates Scott. “We were going to do eight elements a side, but we were able to rig two of the S10 mid-highs on top of subs as fill and fly seven a side. We reconfigured using Adamson’s Blueprint AV prediction software. Red Deer has dual stages running concurrently, and the distance across the front is 25 metres. Using Blueprint AV, we found a nice position for all eight subs across the front, avoiding lobes and nulls. It looked great on paper, and when we walked around and had a listen, we were impressed by how accurate it was.”
As a baptism of fire, Aisle 6 first sent the S10 rig out on one of their most difficult gigs. “It was two days of school events, outside on the school oval,” says Scott. “I wanted to put the S10 in its worst-case scenario. It was ground-stacked, and the acts were going from a string ensemble, to a dance group, to a band, all with no soundcheck. We called up the Adamson presets in the processors, and didn’t use any graphic EQ. We had headset mics come on stage with just a high-pass on them, and turned them up. No feedback, no nodes; it was very surprising. We got through all of the gigs and had no problem with SPL over 70m. It was almost too easy. We were pushing up faders, and gain before feedback was amazing; the S10’s pattern control is so great because it comes right down into the lower frequencies, with the S10 array coming right down to 60Hz itself.”
Adamson: www.adamsonsystems.com
Australian Distributor: www.cmi.com.au
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