The new equipment is predominantly for Room 2. "The room is essentially a black box, but I wanted to put a bit more focus onto the lasers," said Parry. "The room contains a massive block of colour and we've used Coemar iCyc 250s as an architectural backdrop."
The club has also used six Thomas PixelPar 87s from Lighting Effects Distribution to highlight the structural arches, along with a pair of Coemar iSpot 575s and a CF7 as a centrepiece effect. Parry has worked the design around some of the existing fixtures, giving him more targets for the 1W laser, making for a more dramatic lightshow.
Parry says: "I have always liked Coemar products and specified their yokes - ProSpots 250s and 575s - for Rehab in Leeds, where they have continued to work well." He added: "We can now produce a full-on lightshow in Room 2, which is filled with colour, while the use of the architectural LED effects creates a great environment for the corporate market."
In Room 1, Parry has four further iSpot 575s, along with two iCyc 250s and another CF7. The iSpots fill the space with beams, ceiling-mounted off the original truss, which is repatchable. The Room 3 makeover also includes eight Coemar ProSpot 150s.
Part of Room 1's redesign includes a new DJ booth - lovingly constructed from reclaimed timber. In the new 'flown' elm rack is a pair of the new BSS FDS-366T Omnidrive Compact Plus (with improved WhiseWorks-Neville Thiele filters), designed to optimize the high and sub frequencies of the installed line array system.
Parry plans to add further control and sound mapping capabilities, utilizing the flexibility of BSS Audio's new release SB2 software (operating on the 366Ts) in conjunction with a Tablet PC, which will allow him to manage the speaker system remotely on a wireless LAN. With an access point in each of the three rooms, the club will be able to manipulate the system using SB2 in conjunction with the Soundweb Designer File.
This new signal path operates entirely in the digital domain, with the FDS-366Ts - fed from the existing Soundweb network via an AES digital output card down a multi to the DJ box - managing the house system parameters. "It's important to keep the audio in the digital domain for as long as possible before converting to analogue," believes BSS Audio's Richie Rowley. "With the addition of SB2 control and the Thiele tuning, the sound reinforcement system now has wings. The Thiele filter allows the club to feed in more power without fear of over-excursion, which reduces the distortion; the highs are much cleaner and lows so much tighter."
The Room 1 upgrade at Fabric also includes the first use of Allen & Heath's Xone:92 DJ mixer - the launch of which we reported last month.
