This is Yerves' sixth year at the venue. "I started with The Independent in 2009, but I still do the occasional short tour from time to time if the dates allow. In 2014, we staged almost 300 shows so my touring work is very occasional. This is a five hundred capacity auditorium, a square box with an arched ceiling and concrete floor; the back wall has a VIP balcony above. The Independent has grown its reputation through quality of performance; it's simply a great place to see a band, yet I knew from my touring experience that we could do better and in 2014 we began to address the issue of a new PA system."
Yerves began by polling opinion. "I consulted with a number of people; touring colleagues and a selection of sound engineers who have worked the room and know its character. With my own touring experience to help me analyze what the different sources said, I began to form a consistent picture. I contacted Glen Hatch at Audio West, a d&b Partner located on the West Coast, through a mutual friend; their products were the consensus choice. I had plenty of experience with d&b myself, mainly a bunch of J-Series rigs, and had good experiences with it. Even so, what Glen suggested surprised me."
"In short this was a simple project," said Hatch. "As a small concert venue with relatively benign acoustics, it just required a simple left/right system. Modelling the room in ArrayCalc indicated that V-Series would be ideal.
V-Series launched just as Yerves ceased touring, so his experience with the system was limited. "Just one of my final shows at a festival in the mid-West. Not the biggest event, they had a small V-Series rig. I must admit I was sceptical when I first saw it; just the size of the boxes concerned me. But as soon as I got to use it what I knew straight away was it was as good as any d&b system and sounded great, easily managing the audience size for the festival."
Audio West installed the system late 2014. "With Terry's input I designed V8 line arrays each side, with a pair of the wider dispersion V12s below. On the floor we placed six V-SUBs across stage under the front-lip." Yerves was pleased - "Audio West did a great job; we were up and running in a day. I knew that coverage of the audience would be easy; it was no different for the balcony, covering perfectly without putting any unwanted energy onto the flat rear wall below.
"d&b systems are entirely reliable in that sense, doing just what they say in the specifications. But there was a bonus, the arrival of the D80, an amplifier not released when I had used the system just three years earlier. That only made Hatch's assessment better, increasing the available system headroom beyond the needs of even the loudest band. Really it was a no-brainer. Then when we began to use the system we found it so efficient, it even used significantly less electrical power than its predecessor; that's an important factor to The Independent which prides itself on its green credentials."
(Jim Evans)
