"I’m really pleased with it" he says, "It’s a very easy-to-adjust, flexible system, I would never return to using loads of boxes when I can now use just one. I’ll definitely be specifying it for other bands I engineer for in the future.” He also comments that many venues they’ve been able to leave the system EQ flat or use it very minimally.
The Gomez system consisted of 16 VerTec High packs - eight per side - and 12 Adlib Audio subs. The optimum flying/stacking formats for each venue were calculated quickly using JBL’s VerTec computer simulation programme, the Line Array Calculator. This accurately determines the number of boxes needed to cover the area, and the exact angles between the cabinets based on the assorted array-to-audience distances.
Adlib Audio systems engineer Marc Peers explains, that they also used physical sight lines and their own previous experiences of the different venues acoustics to come to a final optimum rigging format each day. At the Brixton show, to ensure adequate coverage downstairs, they took the slightly unorthodox approach of ground stacking four boxes a side and flying four others. To ensure the high frequencies sat nicely above the punter’s heads, they put the ground-stacked Vertec boxes on top of a sub each side.
Peers affirms, "Overall, the system has been fantastic. It’s been very smooth and even sounding across the venues, with the top end reaching clear to the back of the hall - even in challenging sound venues like Cambridge and Edinburgh Corn Exchanges" Vertec has enabled them to get 8k and above frequencies easily all the way back - an area where it traditionally dies off.
He adds that VerTec is incredibly easy to rig, and at 72 Kgs per box with nine components inside, is a very compact, efficient and powerful system. "You can fly 18 cabinets off two one-tonne motors" he says. "That’s brilliant, and we only need four Crown VZ5002 per eight Vertec cabinets. The FOH desk on Gomez was a Soundcraft Series 5 and a Heritage 3000 on monitors, with a DBX 480 Drive Rack and a 480R remote controller for ground stacks and also balcony equalisation - should they have needed it.
(Lee Baldock)
