Darren Gardener of LSFX explains: "When we met with Col Hamilton, the resident DJ at Lush, he was adamant that the sound had to be on a par, if not better, than the big UK mainland and US clubs." To achieve this, Gardener looked at all the main audio players, in the end recommending an EAW Avalon system. The Avalon system is one of the most specified club systems in America, so Col Hamilton contacted an American DJ friend to ask if Lush should invest in an Avalon system. The answer came back loud and clear that it was the ‘system of choice’ for serious clubs stateside and that Lush was making the right decision.
With the go-ahead in place, Darren Gardener enlisted the help of EAW in the UK and worked with them on the specification of the new sound system. Over a period of two months, and several CAD drawings later, Gardener and his team had a final proposal ready for Lush. The biggest challenge was the positioning of the speakers in such a large venue. The team opted to strategically place a single DC1 in each corner of the main room, four DC1 super tweeter arrays above the dance floor, two DCS2 subs and two AS690s as side fill and a massive wall of 12 DCS2 subs (configured as two stacks of six) either side of the DJ box. A further two were located in the central area of the club. The speaker set-up is backed by Crest CA amps, installed in two purpose-built air-conditioned racks, with processing via four XTA 226 units and all run from Allen & Heath's new V6 valve mixer.
The system was installed in just three weeks and on Monday 19th January was switched on for the first time. According to Darren Gardener, "nobody could believe we were able to generate so much power. Everybody, as one, moved back off the dance floor and away from the subs with insane grins from ear-to-ear." On Saturday, the EAW team arrived, along with Andy Simmons from Crest Audio, for a final commissioning of the system. All went smoothly and Lush reopened its doors on Saturday 25th January to 2,000 excited punters.
(Ruth Rossington)
