Stylus is located in the basement building complex beneath the famous Leeds Uni Refectory, a gig renowned for hosting some landmark live performances in its day.
Adlib has a history of involvement in various capacities with Leeds University Students' Union (LUSU), who run all the venues on campus, and were one of the companies asked to propose a new sound design and system for Stylus, which was compiled by Adlib's Roger Kirby and John Hughes. Although the project funding process was initiated before his arrival in Leeds, the installation was co-ordinated for the Union by technical manager, Ryan Esson.
The new system - with six KARAis a side - is flown above Stylus's existing lighting rig box truss. The lighting truss assembly is 8m wide and extends back from the rear of the stage beyond the front of house position approximately 15m.
To aid the KARAi's HF patterns in being fully effective for the room, the flying points had to be positioned extremely carefully. Adlib also provided a low profile solution to optimise the arrays due to the limited headroom, resulting in the Adlib installations team headed by Alex Burke, adding four 3m sections of Prolyte truss, plus all the essential rigging.
"The main sonic requirements for the audio was smooth & even coverage delivered with impact for varied events," says Kirby.
Two L-Acoustics 12XTis are flown as centre-stage down-fills to cover the triangular area at the barrier position favoured by all 'die-hard' music fans! At the back of the room near the bar, four EV Delta Max speakers from the original system remain to cover the higher floor level positions.
All the speakers are driven by proprietary LA8 amps and can be controlled via the LA Network Manager.
The venue's existing BSS 9088 Soundweb units are used as a multi-room audio matrix across all the Union venues, so each room's DJ, FOH console, Aux Monitors and other sources are fed into this network. They retained use of this system in part, together with their existing legendary Midas XL3 FOH console. For monitors, Adlib supplied 12 of their own low profile MP3 15 inch bi-amped active wedges.
(Jim Evans)
