Flex Array TFA-600H three-way mid/high in-fills positioned just in front of the side fills covered the front audience area. “We have this curved crowd barrier and those cabinets cover the centre really nicely, and then we have a couple more Flex Array boxes at the outside to cover the flanks,” says Keirle.
Low end was provided by a total of 18 TFA-900B subwoofers, ground stacked three high by two wide at left and right, and a centre block two high by three wide which was phase aligned appropriately to break up the power alley/power valley complications frequently encountered with widely spaced traditional left/right sub configurations.
“The subs were great in the room,” he says. “We had very even coverage for the majority of the space and easily reached the back of the tent. In fact I was running the subs at -6dB over the weekend; we had plenty of headroom there!”
According to Keirle, the coverage of the flown Flashline boxes was exceptional. “We weren’t dealing with a huge amount of boxes but achieved a great result,” he says. “Vertically (front to back) our coverage was great – I trimmed and EQ’d boxes independently to accommodate throws varying from10 metres to 100 metres in the array, but the transitions were pretty seamless across the room.
“We had no issues in the horizontal domain. The TFS-900H high packs offer a true 90° horizontal spread, and the areas closer to the stage were covered very nicely with Flex array boxes positioned where needed and delayed appropriately.”
Flashline was put through its paces with a broad range of music and was particularly impressive on the DJ sets. The commercially mastered music presented an opportunity to demonstrate the accuracy of the PA and display the responsiveness of the sub and low frequencies, as well as the articulated reproduction of high frequencies.
“During Calvin Harris’ set I was sitting at FOH, 60 odd metres from the source, and could still feel the extreme highs from 16kHz on up being pushed forcefully past my ears,” enthuses Keirle.
“Flashline offers a unique HF – the majority of modern line arrays have a very smooth, soft-sounding top end, whereas Flashline gives you a more in-your-face, up-front top end,” he comments. “Even when the HF needs boosting, when at a good level you can definitely feel the extreme highs pushing past you a lot more noticeably than other modern line array boxes.
“The Flashline subs definitely stand out. The large enclosure offers an extremely deep sound more reminiscent of the older 21-inch Turbosound folded horns, while retaining the tightness and responsiveness of modern double 18-inch configurations.
“The levels were running reasonably comfortably at FOH. Due to the long throw, the HF was getting more of a workout than the other elements, but overall we were sitting pretty comfortably. Our limit was just over 100dB and I’m confident we could have achieved a lot more before running out of headroom.”
Based purely on audience reaction, the public and visiting FOH engineers alike enjoyed the sound of the Flashline PA, reports Keirle. “As with every show, engineers are never afraid to ask for a little more gain, more low end, less of this or that frequency, and I always do my best to keep them happy with on-going collective improvements to the system processing.
“Over the entire weekend, we had no complaints whatsoever.”
The Britannia Row crew for the Pepsi Max stage at Wireless were Craig Ross (FOH), Alex Hore (monitors), Johnny Keirle (systems technician), Hector Rivera and Danilo Z (stage technicians), and Lez Dwight (audio coordinator).