Italy - When Arturo Vicari bought his old company RCF back from the receivers in December 2003, there were no guarantees that it could be successfully re-established.
The veteran manufacturer which had existed prior to its sale to Mackie in 1999 was no more; Vicari and his reassembled team were faced with the task of regenerating a successful manufacturing concern with the quality product, the global distribution network and, more importantly the goodwill necessary for survival in a highly competitive marketplace.
For the initial core of workers who returned to the factory in the northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia to start again from scratch, the future must have seemed daunting and uncertain. They had no IT infrastructure to work with, and Frankfurt's ProLight&Sound exhibition, at which they would have to introduce their first batch of new products, was looming just four months ahead.
But now, two-and-a-half years later, not only is RCF back, but the new company has a broader product range and, thanks to the Herculean trials of the last 30 months, a proven, experienced and motivated workforce. With product development helped in part by synergies with Vicari's other company AEB (dB Technologies), RCF has seen a 30% sales increase this year, and the year-end should see them hit the 30m turnover mark - not bad inside of three years.
Their achievement is impressive, whichever way you view it, and the secret of the success is partly at least down to people. Following the announcement of RCF's 'return', Vicari was warmly welcomed by industry colleagues at the Winter NAMM Expo in California in January 2004: not everyone in pro audio could expect such a reception.The company that exhibited at Frankfurt this year (see L&SI May 2006) has over 200 products in its portfolio, slotted into six broad market sectors. These include the two 'traditional' RCF markets - commercial audio products and the 'core' business of high quality 'Precision' transducer manufacture for OEM markets. The other four areas are the Acustica installed sound range; Forum congress solutions; Pro Loudspeaker systems (including the popular ART Series) and a relatively new market for the RCF brand - Touring and Theatre.
And it's to this last category that the company's latest product range belongs. The introduction of the 4PRO 6001 and 7001 series of live sound reinforcement systems over the past 18 months has gained RCF a strong foothold with audio rental companies around the globe, and this has now been built on with the "next logical step" in that process - the introduction of the TT+ 'High Definition' range.
Product manager Emanuele Morlini explained that the 'High Definition' tag specifically denotes the high standard of the company's transducer design and manufacture capability. "All the speakers are state-of-the-art in the market in terms of performance, weight and price," he says, and it's these advantages, so important to rental companies, that will make the TT+ series a strong competitor, says Morlini.
For example, take the TTL33-A - a compact line array module and the flagship of the TT+ range. Weighing just 33kg per box, these active, 3-way boxes have a frequency response of 60Hz - 20kHz and a max SPL of 134dB. The powered route was chosen to ensure optimum performance and plug-and-play reliability, although a passive version is in the pipeline. Its three high-power Class D amplifiers and onboard DSP are housed in an aluminium extrusion external to the cabinet, to aid heat dissipation. The DSP has 16 configurable presets, and a proprietary software system allows for the adjustment of the array's dispersion characteristics. It also tells you the ideal splay and flybar angles, the weight of the syste
