Its sister venue in Southend, the smaller Palace Theatre, went all EV a couple of years ago, and with close collaboration and resource-sharing between the two houses, there were considerable advantages in staying with the brand and with supplier Shuttlesound.
The Cliffs Pavilion is a receiving house, seating over 1,600 for a theatrical production, but with flexible set-up arrangements enabling 2,500 to be accommodated for live gigs. As one of the premier division of regional theatre venues, Cliffs Pavilion has to balance the needs of touring bands bringing in their own systems with the needs of visiting theatre productions, conferences, dinner-dance functions, awards ceremonies - the staple diet of the modern multi-functional performing arts centre. TED AV's solution was an installed house PA system using high-end Electro-Voice loudspeakers and amplifiers, which can also be patched into by any visiting artist.
Madness and The Prodigy among them, three-quarters of the acts that have come to the Cliffs Pavilion since the installation have tied into the new EV house system. The key to this easy-to-use functionality lies in an innocuous-looking laptop computer. Head of Sound Glenn Oxenbury explains, "The system is run by IRIS-Net control and supervision software, and it was one of the main reasons for going down the Electro-Voice road. Shuttlesound's engineers designed a password-based interface for us, which allows us several levels of control and to lock out unauthorised users. From the laptop, we can change the time delays or the EQ, we can system check, we can monitor all the boxes and carry out maintenance."
TED AV has picked EV ZX5s, four cabinets of which are used in the main stalls cluster above the stage, and another three cabinets in a balcony cluster about mid-way from stage to the rear of the theatre. Phoenix PX2152 high-output 15" two-ways are fitted either side of the pros arch stage, two for main PA, two for the boxes, along with eight Xsubs. A total of 20 Xi1082 compact full-range cabinets handle the balcony and under-balcony, supplemented by a few EviD 8.2 ceiling speakers.
"The clarity is amazing," says Glenn Oxenbury. "The acoustics in here are dictated by the all-wood interior but the EV system provides plentiful delay, and we can always put it in a little extra where it's needed. Visiting enginers find that really useful. This makes our job easier than it used to be, and something we can be really proud of."
Leon Hudston. project manager for TED AV's seven-man engineering team reports, "A 44-channel Midas Legend was chosen to drive the system, augmented by Klark Teknik SQ1 Graphic Equalisers, Klark Teknik SQ1 Dynamics and Yamaha SPX 2000s - all mounted in 5-Star flightcases. Ten EV PX1152 wedge monitors were provided for the stage, powered by four EV CP2200s.
"The ageing control-room and auditorium Harting connection panels were replaced with VDM and re-wired to the audio patch-bay, which was itself stripped-out and replaced with four 96-way Mosses & Mitchell Bantam units.
(Jim Evans)
