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Everyone's a Winner as Errol Brown Tours with Flex Array
When an Ivor Novello-winning singer and songwriter, whose music has had a huge impact on popular British culture, decides to hang up his microphone for good, you can be sure that audiences at his last shows will demand nothing but the very best audio quality. Such is the case with former Hot Chocolate vocalist Errol Brown, whose final UK tour has seen a Turbosound Flex Array system delivering every nuance of his slyly flirtatious songs to every seat in packed theatres throughout Britain.
In many ways, Brown and Hot Chocolate produced songs which defined three decades of British music. Everyone's A Winner and You Sexy Thing in the glam, disco-crazed 1970s, It Started With A Kiss and Girl Crazy in the decadent 80s and You Sexy Thing again in the barren 90s, highlighted by The Full Monty - a film that effectively defined a decade.
The 21 date February UK tour had audio supplier STS Touring Productions Ltd, (who also supplied the lighting system) using its brand new Flex Array system for the first time, with 12 TFA-600 and six TSW-218 subs available for deploying how front of house engineer Ralph ‘Rej' Jane and Keith Farmer, STS head of audio development, service and repair, felt was most appropriate for each venue.
"We had Flex Array on demo for a few days a little while ago, which gave us the chance to do three very different shows with it," says Keith. "That proved just how incredibly versatile it is. At all of them Flex stepped right up to the mark, delivering superb coverage and a remarkable amount of power and clarity from such small boxes."
Speaking at the tour's second show in Aberdeen, Rej was already amazed at Flex Array's performance.
"The first time I heard it was two days ago, when we turned it on for the first show in Rhyl," he says. "I have never in my life plugged in a PA with so much power and potential from such a small box. I couldn't believe it. We'd set the consoles up in production rehearsals, but when we put the Flex Array on the end I literally had to reduce all the outputs on the desk by 30dB to keep the meters working at 75%. It really was a shock to stand 30 metres away from a PA that you can hardly see and experiencing that sheer force of sound because you've unwittingly got it turned up too loud.
"It is phenomenally powerful, but it's not just SPL - it's really high quality sound. And this was just from four boxes per side! We had the whole PA stacked onstage behind the proscenium arch in a 1400 seater theatre and we got complete coverage both vertically and horizontally. There wasn't one complaint about the sound - and the audience will let you know if they're not happy!"
Rej has worked with Errol Brown for many years and a prime challenge of his job is that the latter sings very quietly.
"Errol isn't a powerful singer, he sings as loud as he talks, and this is the clearest I've had his voice in a PA for 16 years. The Q pattern out of the box is so tight that I can get tremendous level from his radio mic before feedback."
"Of course a major benefit for us as a sound company is that we have a very happy client," adds Keith Farmer. "We're running the system flat. Unlike with some systems, you don't need a lot of external processing, corrective EQ and so on to make the boxes sound artificially better. And you don't have to use a particularly powerful amplifier in order to make the cabinets sound right, they sound right anyway. I think that's incredibly important and something that Turbosound has always been fantastic at achieving."
Rej agrees, adding, "The clarity is beyond reproach and you know it's the speaker cabinets that are doing that. The sound of the system immediately told me that anything I do to the mix is not going to inter-react with anything else in the mix. If I boost one instrument, it's not going to affect a whole area of bandwidth. I can layer and window things so much more accurately.
"This is the best line array I've come across. Straight from the box it is remarkably better than anything else I've used."
Pictures: Diana Johnson at Tumuli Design.
2nd March 2009
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