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Top West End Clubs Favour ’Studio’ Sound Of ATC
The guiding influence had been Freddie Moss, who has a strong financial stake in both Aura and Chinawhite, and was introduced to the ATC sound which is fast becoming legendary, by Whitaker himself.
“Freddie had been looking for a good, clean quality of sound, which is difficult to achieve in clubs,” explained Chinawhite director, Jeremy Hartley. “This is because the majority of PA systems are horn-loaded.”
Instead of following the conventional route, the ATC principle is to use recording studio quality loudspeakers in slightly greater numbers to give enhanced sound performance and extended listening comfort. “The major advantage in the greatly reduced distortion over a PA type system,” observes ATC’s R&D engineer, Ben Lilly. “Distortion is the major cause of listener fatigue and discomfort.”
Chinawhite had been operating off a hybrid system since opening six years ago. The exclusive, Balinese-themed celebrity venue wanted to standardise throughout the venue’s various private rooms (as well as the main bar area) — and so on Freddie Moss’s recommendation, Jeremy Hartley was invited to an audition in the company’s demonstration suite near Stroud in Gloucester.
“We wanted hi-fi quality but with an element of coarseness. What ATC have done brilliantly is establish a balance between the two,” continues Jeremy. “When you leave the club you do so without any ringing in your ears. The rumble from the subs through the banquette seating is particularly popular with our customers.”
As at Chinawhite the Umbaba system format is for flown, full-range, active 3-way cabs — with passive subs installed into the club’s seating areas. “This has allowed us to maximise the useable floor space, optimise the audio quality in the critical midrange and give excellent coverage,” continues Ben. The flown 3-way active cabs are a development of ATC’s SCM150ASL active studio monitors.
Owned by Jersey-based Palladium Leisure UK (with Spencer Bourne as the main shareholder), the 499-capacity basement venue in Ganton Street uses ATC’s 15in Studio bass driver, popular 3in softdome and a 1in tweeter, driven by the company’s 3-channel amp pack — fitted into a smaller trapezoidal enclosure for ease of installation without compromising audio quality. Each cabinet is constructed for either vertical or horizontal mounting according to the design brief.
The subs are all 15in ported designs, downward firing to enable ATC to fit them into the banquette seating found in the club. They are all driven by two large Camco Vortex 3 Quadro four-channel amps (providing eight channels of 750W power). “The fantastic thing about these subs is the amount of tight low frequency energy; but you can't see where any of it is coming from — and they don't take up any additional floor space,” says Ben.
In the areas where high SPL's are not critical, ATC’s T16 2-way active monitors have been used. These are small, robust and have very wide dispersion resulting in excellent coverage.
At Umbaba, Nick Whitaker has programmed two BSS Soundweb 9088 DSP controllers for optimum performance. The full range cabs run wide-band, with just marginal bottom end roll-off (high pass at around 60Hz). Once again, the subs reinforce the bottom end up to about 100Hz.
Jeremy Hartley couldn’t be happier with the result. “I took a fair bit of persuading to consider moving to ATC in the first place because I had a good relationship with our previous supplier; but I’m delighted that I decided to jump ship.”
In picture: ATC speakers on the dancefloor of UMBABA.
22nd February 2005
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