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Willpower Creates Synergy with QSC ILA
Back in the golden age of disco, Mr. Smith’s in Warrington was at the vanguard of 1980’s club culture, and with its advanced moving rig was firmly in the ‘superclub’ bracket.
But last December the venue was one of three purchased by Paul Kinsey’s burgeoning Nexum Leisure. Earmarking a generous £7m for redevelopment, the company assembled a crack design team — including Alan Brown at Blueprint Design and Will Norton at Leicester-based Willpower Sound and Vision Ltd — to reinvigorate the nightclub and transform the interior into a 2,000-capacity, two-room space.
Although the experienced Willpower started out in the rental industry more than 25 years ago — and still services stages at the major festivals — today the company is making great inroads in the corporate nightclub installation sector. While Will Norton has been buying QSC amplifiers for many years, he has chosen a QSC-processed line array speaker system for the first time, as the preferred primary sound reinforcement in the high-profile club.
Willpower were awarded the contract through their association with lighting company, TechLiaison Ltd, whose MD Malcolm Robertson, had been one of the nightclub lighting pioneers back in that golden era.
“As well as lighting, Mr. Smith’s has always set a precedent in powerful dancefloor sound — so we knew we had to better that,” reasoned Norton. “The venue clearly lent itself to a line array approach.”
The installer had already been treated to a demonstration of a groundstacked QSC Installation Line Array (ILA) at the HQ of Shure Distribution UK (the manufacturer’s UK importer). “If it sounded that good in a demonstration environment I could just imagine what it would sound like in an optimised venue.”
He explained that Nexum had gone to great lengths to cut down on reflections by installing a lot of drapes — and when they saw the compact footprint of the ILA inside the venue the operators were delighted.
Willpower designed two conventional Left/Right hangs in drops of six WL2082-i top boxes, flown with a pair of WL-115sw on each side, while groundstacked and coupled underneath are four MD-S218 (2 x 18in) subs providing further bass extension from a single point source.
The QSC system, supplied by wholesalers Batmink, is thus run five-way using QSC’s new PowerLight 3 — the system is largely powered by four PL380’s with a PL325 assigned to the top boxes. Meanwhile, QSC Audio’s RMX 5050 workhorses drive some of the pre-existing loudspeakers which have been assigned infill duties in the main room, as well as running the system in the second, R&B Room.
But what really brings the sound to life is the use of QSC’s integrated Basis 914lz monitor control operating under QSControl.net, and using QSC Audio’s patented Power Limiting technology.
This technology limits the power driven into a loudspeaker at the amplifier output — thereby protecting it from thermal failure; this feature differentiates Basis from limiters that measure only the output voltage of the amplifier. And this is what causes Will Norton to describe it as “a really great processor.”
And as for the ILA, he says: “It was up, and aligned in no time. Over the years I have worked with a lot of sound systems but this is the best line array I have heard in its class; I tried every type of music on the demo rig and it handled everything I threw at it fantastically well — in fact the ILA produces a big sound for not a very big budget.”
Elsewhere the venue features an industry-spec DJ console and a provision for live feeds; there are ample visual stimuli in the form of lasers, moving lights and trusses … and four projectors firing onto two 12m x 4m fixed screens.
Synergy will trade until 3am midweek and 4am at weekends. And with another similarly-named venue trading in Rotherham, Nexum Leisure now have a third major brand ripe for roll-out.
In picture: the spectacular Synergy interior, showing the ILA’s.
31st March 2008
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