ESW Solutions had the timely opportunity to test the new AX800A system at the Exmouth Festival with one of its most experienced sound engineers Darren Campan and overseen by senior project manager Richard Hawkins.
ESW Solutions works on over 500 events a year and as the company looks to expand its business further, it is continually on the lookout for cost-effective, quality equipment to add to rental stock that will improve live event experiences. So when Proel's Mike Roissetter offered a product demonstration system for the festival, ESW's managing director Martin Nicholls was more than happy to trial it.
The AX800A is Proel's newest line array product, adding to the range of Axiom professional line arrays that have found favour with rental companies worldwide.
"This is a great product for outdoor festivals and events of this type," says Nicholls. "Looks neat, great design - it's lightweight, very straight forward and intuitive to use. We had very little work to do with the EQ on the sound check at the festival site, and we were particularly impressed with the consistency of frequency response from close to stage to the back of the event site."
ESW's regular speaker system, which now consists of 12 AX2065 dual 6.5-inch line arrays and eight SW215 dual 15-inch subwoofers, is out all the time according to Nicholls. "What I really like is that we can break these down into smaller systems that are very easy to move around and works so well for the large amount of conferencing projects that we do. Two tops on a wind-up stand make a perfect small speech-only system, and are so quick to set up and operate. They are so much lighter than our previous system, and it means that we can now put out up to four systems at the same time."
For the festival, ESW's project manager Richard Hawkins elected to fly six AX800A cabinets each side of stage - the top two on long throw factory presets, the next three on standard presets, and the bottom cabinet on the down-fill setting - from rigging towers trimmed at a height of around six metres to optimise coverage over the 100 metre by 75 metre audience space, which numbered at times at around 5,000 people.
On the floor were two of the complementary SW1800A dual 18-inch powered subwoofers each side, and on top of those were two SW215A dual 15-inch powered subwoofers per side from ESW's regular PA rig providing the upper bass octave. AX2065 dual 6.5-inch cabinets were placed on the sub stacks as front fills, with a further AX2065 as a centre stage lip fill. All monitoring was provided by Proel Flash 12A wedges, with Hawkins taking care of all monitor mixes.
Richard Hawkins concludes, "The new Axiom line array sounded great, it's brilliant all round with a lot of depth to it - a proper full range PA."
(Jim Evans)
